


An Audience of One, or: the (Second) First Christmas with the Horsemen

by burnedsugar



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Background Relationships, Christmas, Dylan/Danny if you squint, Gen, Holidays, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28172307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burnedsugar/pseuds/burnedsugar
Summary: In which Dylan doesn't like December, and the Horsemen don't know how to leave it alone.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a short and sweet Christmas present to myself for having finished my finals, and then it grew plot like gangbusters.
> 
> Happy Holidays! Or not, whichever you prefer.

Snow speckled the soft, black sky like fuzz on an old woolen blanket.

It drifted down in large, puffy flakes, clinging happily to the coats and scarves and hair of those few people braving the cold and wet, the dunes of white piled on sidewalks and in the streets. Couples and friends walked along together, arm-in-arm, hands entwined, or bumping elbows, chatting and giggling, their voices magically muffled by the falling snow, sipping piping hot chocolate in cardboard cups, noses and cheeks bitten pink, hats pulled low over stinging ears. Everything was quiet, the city engulfed in heavy, peaceful night.

Dylan tucked his head further into the turned-up collar of his coat, shuffling carefully down the block with a large sack of groceries curled in the crook of his arm. His hands were chilled stiff, balled up in his pockets, and he sped up, thinking of the warmth of his apartment and getting something hot in his belly.

It had been a long, uneventful day. He’d woken that morning to thick grey skies and a foot of snow already plump on the fire escape outside his window, layered over the street down below like whipped frosting, smeared and uneven where small children, bundled up like many-colored marshmallows, were tracking through it, screaming and laughing with the sort of charged abandon that only came with school closures. Dylan vaguely remembered the feeling, a long time ago, dragging a wooden sled behind him as he huffed and puffed up a hill in Prospect Park, up to the very top, where his dad stood waving and laughing.

He’d quickly abandoned these thoughts, fuzzy memories, and turned away from the window to fill the coffee pot with water and set it to brew, and then hopped in the shower. His body ached as it did sometimes in the cold now, and he’d hoped to let the warm water run over him and massage into his muscles and joints, soothe the inflammation, but the moment he stepped into the tub he jumped right back out, shivering from the shock of the icy spray.

The pipes to the building had frozen, the super had said when Dylan hammered on the guy’s door five minutes later, and they had maintenance down in the basement thawing them with heat lamps.

“Mind if I get one?” Dylan had grumbled before he could stop himself, “you know, so I can thaw a little, too, I’m kind of fucking freezing here.” His hair was still dripping the occasional chilly droplet down his neck, despite his having toweled it vigorously and only having barely stepped under the showerhead.

The super had given him an odd, appraising look, and Dylan backtracked dryly. “Hey, ’s just a joke. I’m joking. Thanks for your time.” And then he’d hurried up the stairs two at a time.

When he’d gotten back into his place, instead of the smell of hot coffee he’d expected to be greeted by, he found a steaming pot of cloudy water. He flipped open the top and swore — he must have thrown away the grounds the day before and forgotten — and opened the fridge to reach for the plastic Folger’s jug tucked in the back behind containers of Chinese leftovers and a week-old pizza box. But when he unscrewed the lid and peered inside, there was scarcely more than a teaspoon of fine brown sand and the lingering aroma of what could’ve been. He swore again. He’d tossed the jug into the trash and folded himself promptly back into bed, body aching, hair damp and cold, the ghost of children’s laughter floating up to him on the fifth floor.

He’d had weird dreams — something he was used to by now. Shadows flitted in and out of focus, young blonde women with French accents and soft, flowery-smelling hair and supple skin… older, darker women with soft, wrinkled hands, who smelled like spices and vanilla and pushed freshly-baked cookies into his small fingers, numb from playing in the snow… the flash of white and black-and-red squares, funny shapes spinning so fast he couldn’t make out the numbers in the corners, twisting around long, lithe fingers… bright, trusting eyes suddenly disappearing in a ball of flame… the flash of a knife and long, dark hair and a horrified scream… the disappointed echo and feminine rasp, fading away into the dark… a Cheshire smirk beneath a flat, black hat… falling, falling in the dark and wet… bellowing in terror in the dark as freezing water crept closer to his mouth and nose, the air getting thinner, his lungs screaming, ears ringing….

And then he’d woken again with a gasp and the flash of a pale, pointed face tense with concern, blinking groggily for a moment in the muted light before he'd realized he was safe in bed, though his hair was still damp, tangled up in the sheets and soaked in cold sweat. And he was starving.

He’d struggled out of bed the second time — naps always made him feel thick and feverish. His phone had been the source of the ringing that woke him: he’d had seven new text messages and two calls. He’d flipped through them quickly, just to be sure there wasn’t any sort of emergency, and then dropped it on the bedside table as he staggered back into the kitchen. With damp skin the air in the apartment felt colder and harder, and he fiddled with the thermostat until he heard the heater kick on with a low, comforting hiss, and padded barefoot over the cold tile to the cupboards.

One of the only things Dylan needed to feel confident in his ability to disappear at a moment’s notice, was his ability to disappear at a moment’s notice. No trace of his ever having been there. This apartment didn’t even truly belong to him, not Dylan Rhodes, not Dylan Shrike. Dylan Rhodes had rented a shithole in Vegas until he’d begun a transfer to New York, something that fell through after London. Then he’d gone into hiding. Dylan Shrike too fell off the grid, after passing out of foster care — there was a hospital record of drugs somewhere, though he’d never touched anything harder than a strong drink. Too risky.

But what all this meant was that his apartments — most of them, anyway — had very little in the way of creature comforts. Food, for instance. He stuck with nonperishables and takeout, paid for in cash, for the most part. So he’d pulled a crinkly brown packet of maple oatmeal from an old box, emptied it into a plastic bowl, added just enough water (filtered, that was his weakness, he always filtered his water) for the oats to soften, and popped it in the microwave for a minute or so.

He’d slept past noon and into the one-thirty area, so it might’ve been too late for oatmeal, but at least it was warm. Then he’d spent an hour letting the water run on its hottest setting, hoping to coax some heat out of it, and when he gave up on that, curled up on the old, ripped leather couch in the middle of the living room, picked up the book he’d left on the rickety coffee table the previous night and continued where he’d last left off while the room slowly warmed and the heater gurgled angrily.

The book held his attention until darkness fell, and his stomach began growling persistently, not really satisfied with his meager brunch. He’d heard his phone ring a few more times from the bedroom, and got up to check it only once it became a true nuisance.

Five messages from Merritt.

Seventeen messages and three phone calls from Lula, all of them consisting of something like: ‘We’re going to the park, come play!’ or ‘Snowmennnnn’ or ‘You scrooge’.

Three messages from Jack, and a voicemail. “Let us know if you’re good, man. Lula’s going to launch a full-scale manhunt.”

Nothing from Danny. Danny didn’t text much.

Dylan had fired off a quick response to Merritt, trusting him to quell the younger Horsemen’s worries, and tried the shower one more time. Lukewarm sufficed, and he took a quick wash, rinsing the smell of stale sweat off of his body and scrubbing a pool of shampoo through his hair, and then jumping out before it turned icy again. He’d toweled off and brushed his teeth and sort of ran his fingers through his hair, just enough to work out the worst of the tangles. Then, giving in to the absolute roaring from his gut, he’d grabbed his keys, shrugged on his coat, and wandered out into the night.

The nearest grocery store was six blocks away, and he’d used the walk to take in the strands of multicolored lights strung up on windowsills and fire escapes and tiny, bare trees sprouted out of the little sidewalk gardens in front of the apartments, the fat little Santas and tiny reindeer glowing in windows. Frowning, he’d checked his phone for the date.

The first of December.

No wonder he’d taken a nap.

The first of December, and the first snowfall. He’d thought briefly of an old cartoon movie and wondered about magic, wasn’t there something important about the first snowfall of the season falling on the first of December? Or… he didn’t know. That type of magic had never been his forte.

Mostly he watched his father with big, searching eyes as he flipped card after card, pulled coins and watches out of thin air, practicing for hours in the living room while his mother worked in the kitchen, smiling at her boys: Lionel, the remarkable magician, and Dylan, the remarkably quick study.

His chest had tightened uncomfortably, and he’d been glad for the fluorescents of the store and their sharp contrast to the dreaminess of the snowy night. Grabbing a basket, he’d wandered the aisles absently, plucking things off the shelves and out of the coolers without really knowing what he was taking, nodding at little old ladies and young couples as he squeezed past, but making sure to duck into the liquor aisle before checkout. He’d stared for a long time at the wine, and then stopped pretending to himself and grabbed a tall bottle of scotch.

Then, paying in cash, he’d headed back out into the night.

Yes, it had been a long, uneventful day. And he could only hope it would stay that way.

Dylan was trotting up the last flight of winding stairs, slightly dizzy as always from the tight wrap, not ten minutes later. He fumbled with his keys — numb, stiff fingers — and finally slipped inside.

The heater had found its drive in his absence, and the kitchen and living room were warm and bright, once he’d flicked on the few lamps scattered throughout. He deposited the groceries on the counter and shed his coat on the couch and turned to the oven and the pots and pans shoved haphazardly in the warming drawer. It’d been a long time, but he thought he remembered the recipe. Unpacking the bag, it seemed he did.

He emptied a large tray of ground beef into the deepest pot he had and turned on the burner. Almost immediately the kitchen was filled with the sizzling and savory sweet of cooking meat. He made quick work of an onion, threw that in, and turned the beef over with an old wooden spoon, shaking salt and pepper, and a handful of other spices, into the beef as it cooked. His ears and lips and fingers and toes tingled as he worked, the blood flowing back like liquid heat, and his stomach rumbled in anticipation, even as his chest seemed to tighten further. He dumped in a giant can of diced tomatoes, and poured a healthy measure of scotch into a short glass tumbler. It burned on the way down, like he’d swallowed a mouthful of fire. He let it simmer in his chest, smoky sweet, and then took another, slower sip.

Not much longer and the pot was simmering thickly, dark red and wonderfully lumpy. Dylan washed his hands and turned to the rest of the groceries, still sitting patiently on the counter, waiting their turn.

He definitely remembered this. Days when it was much too cold to go outside, days when he’d been bullied on the way home from school or when she found him wiping at red eyes as he shuffled out of the bathroom, smooshed in next to her in their small kitchen, listening to her hum happily, tunelessly, her hopelessly tone-deaf ear just like his, measuring and adding ingredients at her instruction.

He set the oven preheating and began assembling the pale yellow, brown-flecked dough, ignoring the lump that had lodged itself firmly in his throat. He poured another finger or two into his glass.

Wrapping the balled dough in cellophane, Dylan set it in the fridge to chill, rested his head against the freezer door, and lifted the glass of scotch to his mouth.

“What’s for dinner?”

Twenty years of living duplicitously, and even longer learning to avoid the bigger — not angrier, bigger — kids on the playground, had graced Dylan with the presence of mind to control his shock. Which was a relief, because otherwise he would’ve leapt out of his skin, screeching like a startled alley-cat. And that would’ve been embarrassing.

Instead, he stilled the small tremble in his hand, took another mouthful, and turned around, his expression carefully composed, a slight quirk of the eyebrow, a subtle curl of the lip.

Danny was stirring the pot and peering interestedly over the rim, his nostrils flaring as if picking out every spice bubbling away in its depths.

“Chili?” he said casually. “Mm. Smells pretty good.”

His coat was folded neatly over the back of the couch, but his cheeks were still bright pink from the cold. There were dark, wet marks halfway up to his knees, and his hair, regaining some of its length since London, was slightly mussed, as if the victim of an unfortunate noogie that he couldn’t quite recover from completely.

“Thanks,” said Dylan dryly. “How’d you —”

“— get in? Come on.” Danny finally looked up, tight-lipped smile and carefully-guarded gaze and all, his hands spread wide as if to say, ‘It’s me’.

“— find out where I live,” Dylan finished.

Danny snorted and turned back to the pot of chili. “You mean where you live today.”

“Sure, why not.”

“You added too much cumin.”

“I did not.”

“Yeah,” he said, drawing the word out and wiggling his fingers indecisively, glancing along the counter and up at the cabinets, “yeah, you did. There’s not much you can do to dilute it, unfortunately, but I think it’ll be okay. It just needs a bit more… aha! Paprika.”

He withdrew the bottle from the cupboard and popped the cap, making to shake it over the pot. Dylan’s hand closed around his wrist, and the other snatched the offending spice out of his grasp.

“Don’t touch my chili.” He replaced the bottle and with one fairly gentle push, shoved Danny away from the stove.

Danny held his hands up innocently, shrugged — the ‘Your loss’ implicit — and strode around the counter and into the living room, glancing around with interest.

“It’s emptier than I thought it would be,” he said. “You’re not an ascetic, are you? Because that would be incredibly weird and boring all at once.”

“Jack is the lock-pick,” said Dylan, ignoring him as he too entered the living room.

“Yeah, we’ve been teaching each other.”

“That’s good,” said Dylan sincerely, but no less dry. “You guys are really working together, like a team. It’s good.”

Danny shrugged again.

“How long did it take you to pick it up?”

“About a week of solid practice. A month to get really good. But now everyone keeps breaking into everyone else’s place, so it’s kind of a nuisance, actually.” His lip curled in distaste.

Dylan snorted. “And how —”

Danny glanced at him over his shoulder, the raised eyebrows and faint smirk back in place. “A good magician never reveals his secrets. You should know better.”

A true smile spread across Dylan’s face this time, his own eyebrows climbing a bit as he gestured with the glass in his hand. “True. But if you and the Horsemen can find me —”

“We didn’t.”

Dylan liked the use of ‘we’. “—then the feds can find me —”

“They can’t.”

“—and I just got back to the States a few days ago, I’d really like to just stay put for a week, a couple days, at least.”

“You’re fine.”

“How —”

“Henley,” said Danny simply.

“Ah.” Dylan added to his glass for the third time and sipped. “I didn’t know you were still in contact.”

“I’m not,” said Danny. “Lula is.”

“Of course,” Dylan sighed, not even bothering to wonder how the two women found each other.

“Jack told you she was going to start a search party.”

Dylan fixed him with a shrewd look over his glass. “Is that what this is? A search party? Are the rest of them on their way to rescue me?”

“Again?” It seemed to spill out before he could stop it, but Dylan had never seen Danny take anything back, and this moment didn’t appear to be any different.

Dylan swallowed, briefly felt water seeping into his nasal passages, his lungs, before he took a deep breath and found nothing but dry, warm air there. “Yes. Again.”

“What do you think, Dylan? Do you need rescuing?”

“No,” he said firmly.

“Then no. Stir your chili.”

Dylan spun, noting the slight sway in his torso as he did and filing it away to be monitored, and hurried back to the oven. Danny was right — the sides were hinting at congealing. Dylan scraped them clean with the wooden spoon and stirred for a long, quiet moment. He took another swallow of scotch. The burn was immeasurably pleasant now, like a purr, the lump in his throat and the tightness in chest long gone.

“Why are you here?” he said finally, just as Danny said,

“Where’ve you been?”

They smiled wryly at each other, Dylan from the kitchen; Danny, over the top of the book Dylan had been reading earlier, which he was flicking through leisurely.

“ _Great Expectations_ ,” said Danny. “Hm. How….”

“Worldly? Cultured?”

“…fittingly cliché. Although I have to admit, I’m a bit surprised it’s not _David Copperfield_.”

Dylan snorted again. “Don’t lose my place.”

Danny twisted his hand so the inside of the book faced Dylan, its pages fluttering freely, bookmark gone. He displayed his free palm, the back of the same hand, the palm again in quick succession — ‘nothing unusual here’ — and then did the same to the book, only when the pages once again faced Dylan, Danny nodded in the direction of Dylan’s waist.

“Is there something in your pocket, sir?”

Stifling a grin, Dylan felt in his back pocket, and his fingers brushed the playing card he’d been using as a place holder. He withdrew it —

The Joker.

Scrawled across it in black marker was the page number he’d stopped on.

“Is that your card?” said Danny seriously.

Dylan flicked it deftly in his direction, and Danny blocked it with the book.

“That arrogance was never phony,” said Dylan, uncomfortably unaware of the fact that there was no malice anywhere to be found in his voice.

“Oh, no. Never. I’m all real.”

“You know you’re kind of a bastard?”

“So I’ve been told,” he said, setting the book down. “Where were you?”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Dylan said.

“Ooh, a trade. Intriguing,” said Danny, folding himself into the couch and kicking his fashionable, boot-clad feet up on the table. “Lionel Shrike’s fist scenario doesn’t quite work when each guy has a closed fist, does it.”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Dylan, taking another drink.

“You go first.”

“Abroad.”

“Gee.”

They scrutinized each other.

“With the Eye?” said Danny, after a moment.

“Doing some recon,” said Dylan by way of confirmation.

Danny’s fingers began to drum on the arm of the couch. A light had sparked behind his eyes, and suddenly Dylan had his full attention.

“A new show?”

“Possibly.”

“When? Where? And —”

“The details aren’t all worked out yet —”

“— why aren’t we being included in the planning stage? We’re officially in the Eye, after London Bu Bu initiated us, we deserve to be a part of whatever’s going on, we deserve to have a say in whatever ridiculous stunts we’re supposed to be pulling off, especially when we’re all reduced to these shitty facsimiles of what our lives used to be because we’re hiding from the FBI —”

Dylan let Danny ramble, watching the flush rise in his face, appreciating again the use of ‘we’. They must have been growing close, even Danny, the ‘I’ man. He knew they all had their own apartments, even Jack and Lula, despite the fact that one of theirs was usually empty, but he wondered how much time they actually were spending together, and felt a faint pang. The pang of age. Growing older. Being left behind.

“— we want to be included, and I will find a way to contact Bu Bu myself, if I have to, to make sure that happens.”

Ah, well. A slip-up every now and then was to be expected. That’s a lot of change in a short amount of time for someone as headstrong and convinced of his own capabilities as J. Daniel Atlas.

“It’s just a bit of research, nothing substantive.”

“No, no. We want to be involved in all of it,” said Danny sharply, “and honestly, we’re tired of being treated like —”

“Horses?”

“Mules,” he spat, as if the word was coated in gasoline.

Dylan drew in the remainder of the scotch, rolling it around in his mouth thoughtfully. Danny’s eyes never left his face. He wondered if Merritt had been teaching him mentalism, too.

“You’re not mules.”

“Yeah, we can really tell. We’re really a decisive force. You know, we thought things would be different now.”

“They are. It’s not the Eye. I took the job without asking you.”

Danny’s jaw clenched, a tendon working hard below his cheek. “Why.” It wasn’t a question — it was an accusation.

A pair of bright eyes were swallowed in flame. An echo of a heavy punch, the buckling of knees and a gasping breath, scorched across his brain.

Something released in Danny’s expression. So Merritt had been teaching him. Well, might as well out with it, then.

“There was a possibility it could’ve been dangerous,” said Dylan, turning away and filling his glass for the fourth time. “I’m not going to put you guys in a situation that I can’t guarantee I can get you out of safely.”

There was silence as he sipped.

“We’re in this,” said Danny finally, “we’ve committed, this is what we want. We know what we signed up for. Don’t take that from us.”

Dylan’s hand shook ever so slightly as he lifted the glass to his lips again.

Suddenly, Danny’s hand was in front of his eyes, pulling the glass away.

“Hey —”

“Ah —” Danny silenced him with a wag of his finger, and then slid the glass across the counter, where it came to a neat stop at the edge, far out of Dylan’s immediate reach. “Stir your chili.”

Dylan sighed and picked up the wooden spoon.

“Besides,” said Danny, and Dylan could hear him jump onto the counter behind him as he stirred, “we’re better at recon than you.”

“Excuse me?” said Dylan incredulously, whipping around so fast that splotches of chili splattered across the floor. “You think so? And — get your ass off my counter. Who raised you.”

Danny dodged his surprisingly agile swipe, but leapt down. “It’s true. We found you, didn’t we? We stole the stick.”

“And who saved all your asses when you got fooled into handing it over to Mabry?”

“You just had lucky timing. Is dinner ready?”

“Okay, let’s just get a couple things straight, all right. One, you were not invited to dinner — you broke into my apartment and made yourself at home and invaded my kitchen.”

“It’s not really much of a home —”

“— Two, no, it’s got to simmer and thicken for another hour, at least, so a modicum of patience wouldn’t go amiss —”

“— I’d really call it more of a holding cell — _modicum_ — a _modicum_ of patience—”

“— _Three_ , the only way you four dysfunctional misfits would ever measure up to me is if Merritt hypnotized you all into a hive mind. And since that is so far beyond the realm of possibility, you can go ahead and drop the idea and save yourself the time and heartbreak.”

“Humble,” said Danny.

“I learned from the best. Open the fridge.”

Danny snorted and did as he said. “Don’t tell me you’re adding more onion, it’s got enough, believe me.”

“Stop taking shots at my cooking, or you really aren’t invited to dinner. I’ll tie your ass to the heater and eat by myself while you develop third-degree steam burns. And —”

“I wasn’t taking a shot at your cooking, I was taking a shot at your chili recipe.”

“— _and_ ,” Dylan pressed on, scraping the sides of the pot, “hand me that ball of dough.”

Danny picked it up and closed the fridge.

“What’s this?”

Dylan took it from him before he could start pinching at the dough. He withdrew a pair of sheet pans from the warmer and set them on the counter. “Take half —” he tore the chilled yellow ball in two “— and start pulling off pieces and rolling them into balls. Like this.”

“Cookies?” said Danny wryly, watching as Dylan flattened a ball onto the pan. “Aren’t you Miss Betty Homemaker. Ever thought about making your next last name Stewart?”

“Hey. You want chili or not? Start shaping.”

They worked together, bickering lightly while Dylan’s head swam a bit more pronouncedly. He wasn’t surprised to see that the bottle had disappeared, but he wasn’t sure if it would reappear later on.

Once the sheets were filled, Dylan slid them into the oven, and twelve minutes later, pulled them back out.

They’d flattened and turned a pale, creamy white, speckled with brown. Dylan waited briefly for them to cool enough to touch, and then took one for himself and pressed another into Danny’s long fingers.

“It smells like licorice,” he said flatly.

“Don’t argue with me. Just eat it.”

Dylan bit into his own cookie — it broke off crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside, and a wave of nostalgia washed over him. He was standing back in their old apartment, light and slightly spicy, with a touch of anise and vanilla.

“Wow,” Danny said, the tone of grudging admiration muffled slightly as he took another bite. “Yeah, okay. These are really good. These are really…” he took another cookie, nearly dropping it when it burned his fingers, “— ah, shit — good.”

Dylan nodded, swallowing, the cookie and his own reluctance. “My… my mom used to make them for me, before she…. When it was cold, or when…” He shrugged. His voice had gone all gravelly, like it was trying to strangle itself. “When I was having a bad day.”

Danny glanced up at him, clearing his throat, which nearly backfired and almost caused him to choke.

“Was she…” He cleared his throat again. “Was she….”

Dylan hesitated for a long time, letting the unasked question hang in the air, turning another cookie round and round in his fingers, until they were covered with crumbs. He broke it in half, and then put both pieces back on the tray, dusting his hands over the trash.

“…She was amazing,” he said, urging his jaw to form words. “She took care of us. And…” He shook his head. “…I loved her. More than —”

The lump had returned with a vengeance and taken his tongue hostage.

He didn’t say anything else, and Danny didn’t pry, for which he was grateful. Danny simply took a handful of cookies and wandered out into the living room, sinking into the couch as he said, garbled by cookie,

“Chili!”

After another half hour or so, Dylan ladled the chili into two bowls, the only two bowls in the entire apartment besides the one sitting in the sink with oatmeal residue on its sides, and carried them out to the coffee table. Danny was reading _Great Expectations_ from the place where Dylan had left off with his boots on the table, and there were two large glasses of water on either side of his legs. Dylan didn’t waste time asking when he’d gotten them. He just knocked Danny’s feet to the floor and handed him a bowl.

They ate and laughed and talked about the other Horsemen and their day in the snow, about their skill-swapping, about Lula’s attempts to adopt them all into a semi-incestuous family of sorts, how Jack was now getting so good at mentalism that Danny was considering putting an alarm on his door, just in case he got any funny ideas, about how strange it was that Dylan added brown sugar to his chili and ate it with peanut butter sandwiches exclusively, about magic, about the Eye and the White Room at the bottom of the spiral staircase. He stopped asking Danny why he was there.

They talked until suddenly Dylan wasn’t talking anymore, and the room was dark but for a single lamp angled at the ratty old recliner opposite the couch, where Danny sat with one ankle crossed casually over his knee, and _Great Expectations_ held open with one dexterous hand, and there was a thick blanket — the bedspread off Dylan’s mattress — draped over Dylan’s body, where it certainly hadn’t been moments before.

“Atlas?” Dylan mumbled, squinting up at him as he lifted his head and the entire room tilted a few degrees.

Without looking up from the book, Danny waved him off. “I know.”

And the tilting of the room coaxed Dylan’s head back down to the nearest surface, and then he drifted away into a deep, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just really wanted to leave an end note.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I'm doing this one chapter ahead. So three is done, and I'll post it when four is finished. Why? I dunno, it made sense in my head.
> 
> I'm planning on 26. We'll see how that pans out.

Dylan woke abruptly the next morning with a disoriented shout and promptly rolled off the couch in his confusion, landing on the uneven, splintered wood flooring with a painful _thud_ from his elbow.

“Shit —”

He groaned, easing himself off of the now-bruising arm, and scrubbed at his face. There was a decent amount of drool crusted on his cheek and in the stubble he hadn’t bothered shaving since he’d returned to the city, and his head was pounding. But at least there was coffee. He could smell it wafting in from the little kitchenette, where came the sound of running water, and the painfully sharp _clinkclink_ of dishes being washed.

He squinted as the night caught up with the morning, and his muddled surroundings began to piece themselves together.

“Atlas?”

Dylan gingerly sat up. He was still half-tangled in his bedspread, and was wearing only one sock. His shoes had been kicked carelessly over the arm of the couch. His sweater was wrinkled and sticky with sweat.

He groaned again. Coffee first, appearance later. Maybe an aspirin in between.

Even more gingerly, he hobbled to his feet, using the couch and the coffee table to steady himself when the room gave another ungainly wobble. “Fuck,” he muttered. Definitely an aspirin.

Dylan staggered into the kitchen, pressing his thumbs into his eyes and reveling briefly in the light pressure there, then blinked blearily around.

Danny was leaning up against the counter, a mug of coffee in one hand, the _Times_ in the other.

“Atlas?” Dylan croaked again.

“Morning, sunshine. There’s coffee.”

His voice rang clear and bright like a goddamn bell, vibrating around Dylan’s skull in waves. “Ngh,” he said in response.

“How eloquent.”

Dylan glared at him as he shuffled to the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee, not waiting for it to cool, not bothering to add sugar or cream — though in truth he wasn’t sure he had any — and gulped down half in one go. Then he fiddled around in the nearest cabinet, angling himself as much away from the sunlight streaming through the two living room windows as his body would allow, fished out a small bottle, and swallowed two small pills with the next half. Then he refilled his cup.

“What are you still doing here?” he mumbled, peering at Danny with only one eye open.

“Reading,” said Danny, gesturing with the newspaper inking up his fingers.

Dylan ‘mm’ed in place of mirthless laughter. “Anything interesting?”

“How interesting do you find the DOW?”

“Not at all.”

“Then no.”

Nonetheless, Danny turned the page and continued to read. “Your fridge is a travesty.”

“I know.”

“I threw out the pizza. It was growing fungus on fungus.”

“…was it mushroom?”

Danny’s mouth twitched. “I hope so.”

They stood in silence, Dylan watching Danny for some signal as to why he was still lounging apparently at his leisure in his kitchen. He wasn’t bad at mentalism, but Danny had this resistance to it that Dylan was sure had something to do with the fact that his face hardly ever moved of its own accord — every eyebrow tic, every lip curl always seemed so calculated. That’s part of what made him so valuable, part of the satisfaction of those small, involuntary twitches every now and then. But they were happening with more frequency, Dylan noticed, even over just the last night. The other Horsemen must’ve really dug their hooks in.

“You should eat,” said Danny, turning the next page.

“Yeah. I don’t have much,” said Dylan. He craned his neck around to stare at his mostly empty cupboards, trying to keep all movement to a bare minimum.

Danny nodded at the microwave while his eyes continued to flit across the paper.

Dylan gave him a strange look, but eased the door open with a devastatingly loud pop and, wincing, found within a plate of scrambled eggs, toast, and sausage. He stared.

“Where’d you get that?”

“From the pan.”

Dylan looked over his shoulder — indeed, a small pan was drying in the dish rack, still dripping water.

“But —”

“I went to the store while you were sleeping and made breakfast. You can sleep through anything, by the way — I tripped over that warped board coming back in and dropped just about everything in my hands.” Danny quirked his eyebrows up. “Not a peep from you.”

“’m sorry I missed it,” said Dylan truthfully, piling the eggs and sausage patties on top of a slice of toast. He smashed the second piece down on top of it all and tore off a huge chunk with his teeth. It was still warm.

“’sgood,” he managed.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” said Danny, turning back to the paper, “I’ve been living on my own since I was sixteen. I can make scrambled eggs.”

Dylan nodded and slowly finished his breakfast, giving each bite time to settle in his stomach before attempting another, and by the time he’d finished, Danny had folded the paper up and dropped it in the trash.

“Hey —”

“Oh, sorry. You want?” Danny plucked it back off the top of the pile.

“Yeah, just leave it on the counter.”

“I thought you said you weren’t interested in the DOW.”

“’m not.”

Danny shrugged. “Whatever you say, buddy.” And he set it back on the countertop.

Then he turned his gaze back to Dylan as they both sipped from their mugs.

Dylan had abandoned his quest the night before, but now, with his belly full and the aspirin kicking in, he was starting to wonder again. He quickly took stock of Danny’s appearance: slightly heavier eyelids, a pale, reddish sort of violet tinge along the waterlines — so he hadn’t slept much; hair back to its normal loose curl, that awkward stage between short and his previous feathery crop, but no longer mussed, so he’d combed it — and had time to go to the store and cook; and — Dylan took in a deep, discreet breath through his nose — showered; but his clothes were still the same, his jeans a bit looser than they should be in the morning, his sweater limp at his shoulders — maybe he had slept a bit. Dylan glanced over at the recliner — that couldn’t have been comfortable. But, remembering the bright glow of the lamp on Danny before Dylan had conked out, and taking into account the state of his eyes… maybe that had been the point.

“So are you planning to shower, or are you just going to stick with that?” Danny said suddenly, pointing at his own cheek where the drool had dried on Dylan’s.

Dylan had just opened his mouth to ask again what he was doing there, but closed it in vague embarrassment and nodded.

“Cool.”

Dylan shuffled off to the bathroom.

Thankfully, the pipes had been sufficiently thawed, and the water that came spitting out of the showerhead was scalding hot. Steam quickly filled the tiny room, fogging up the mirror, on which the words ‘Now You See Me’ had been drawn with someone’s fingertip and were suddenly visible in the watery white cloud over its surface. Dylan snorted and stepped into the tub, ignoring the straight brown hairs that still swirled at the drain and the way it kind of made him feel warmer inside than even the jet of water searing his sleepy skin.

He showered slowly, too, and brushed his teeth (making sure that all the drool had gone from his cheek), and even worked his hair through properly, with a comb and everything, and trimmed what could have finally been classified as a beard back down to a manageable shadow. Then he wrapped a towel around his waist and, feeling much more mobile, left the bathroom in a hurry to cross the comparatively cold apartment to his bedroom.

“You forgot clothes.”

“You don’t say,” said Dylan, flashing Danny a playful look of faux surprise as he backed into his room.

The heater had started making that defeated gurgling noise again, so Dylan found the heaviest clothes he had in this closet — a pair of thick, hardy jeans, an undershirt, and two Academy sweatshirts — and layered up. There were a couple cracks in the windows where the wind could seep in that he kept telling himself to fix, but since he spent so little time in any one apartment, he’d never gotten around to it. Maybe today would finally be the day.

He’d half-expected Danny to have been gone when he came back out, dressed and showered and considerably less hungover but for a lingering dull ache in the space behind his right ear and jaw — but he was slouched on the sofa, a different book in his hand.

“You could ask before you start palming my things,” said Dylan, the corner of his lip twitching.

“I could,” Danny agreed.

Dylan poured himself a third cup of coffee and settled against the living room wall, watching Danny read for a moment, pushing down that sudden flood of warmth that had nothing to do with the coffee, either.

“What are you doing here?” he said.

“Reading,” Danny said again.

“I’ve got a feeling you have more books at your place.”

“You’re not wrong,” he said, shifting the book into one hand and leaning slightly onto the left half of his body so he could withdraw the cell-phone buzzing in his pocket. “Better ones, too. You’re like a high school English class on legs. Where’s the variety, Dylan? Where’s the excitement?” He shot the digs out one after the other as his thumb darted across the bottom half of the screen. “The daring? The dark exploration of human nature?”

“I think I’ve got enough darkness to be getting on with,” Dylan said, grinning into his mug.

Danny tutted. “Cliché.” Then he jumped to his feet, tossing the book flippantly to the coffee table, tucking his phone back into his pocket, and scooped up his — and Dylan’s — coats. “Here.” He pushed the coat into Dylan’s hands, nearly knocking his mug to the floor.

“What —” Dylan dodged the subsequent slosh of coffee and it splattered right where his foot had been not a second before. “What are you doing?”

“It’s cold out,” said Danny, looking blankly at Dylan as he backed over to the lamp in the corner.

“Yeah,” said Dylan, lingering on the word.

Danny switched the light off and the room turned grey and stark. “You’ll catch your death if you go out with wet hair and no coat.”

“What are you, my nanny?”

“No,” said Danny, and he pulled a thick scarf from his coat pocket, wrapped it tightly around his neck with one hand, and opened the front door with the other. “But Lula is on her way and I don’t want to be here when she sees the state of this place.” He glanced around disdainfully before walking out.

Dylan tossed back the rest of his coffee and hurried out after him, shoving his arms into his coat sleeves.

Once in the hall, he searched his pockets for his keys, and then patted his jeans habitually when they weren’t there.

“No point,” Danny said, rattling the keys hung on his finger from halfway down the stairs.

“Unfriendly intruders,” countered Dylan.

Danny paused and glanced doubtfully at him over the banister. “What are they going to steal, your prized toothbrush?”

“…fair.”

They clattered down the stairs as fast as they could go without running and slipped out onto the street in a wash of cold, crisp air and crunching snow.

“Why is Lula coming here?” Dylan panted, his lungs struggling to acclimate to the freeze. “Why are _you_ here?”

“Let’s try left.”

“Hey — where are we going?” he called after him.

Danny simply beckoned over his shoulder, and Dylan shook his head but jogged to catch up with him anyway, careful not to slip and face-plant into a snowbank that might actually have been a car, once he looked closer.

“What is with you guys?” he gasped, holding one hand to his chest. Water slopped up over his face and into his mouth and nose, salt and sediment a gritty tang on his tongue and teeth — he shook his head. “I leave for a month, tops, and suddenly you’ve all gone rogue.”

Danny flicked another doubtful look in his direction, his eyebrows scrunched and his lip quirked. “We’ve hardly gone rogue.”

“Oh yeah? You, breaking into my house and doing my grocery-shopping and my dishes and stealing my liquor — don’t think I didn’t notice that cabinet was empty, I’m the one who molded the Horsemen, remember, I’m not an invalid — and Lula marching over uninvited with some godforsaken mission, Henley, I don’t have a clue how she found me, but you can bet your ass I’m going to find out — I don’t even want to know what Merritt and Jack are getting up to —”

“No, you don’t,” said Danny, eyes wide in warning.

“Great. Fantastic. You’re all at least trying to stay out of trouble, right?”

“Nothing in the papers so far.”

Dylan threw up his hands. “Wonderful.” He shook his head. “Remember when you all had an ounce of respect for me and my orders?”

Another involuntary twitch of the mouth. “No.”

“Well, I do. And it was nice. Peaceful.”

“It sounds boring.”

“I dunno, you tell me — was Vegas boring? Or NOLA? Or Five Points?”

Danny smiled, as much as he ever did. “No.”

“So a little deference, maybe, might be warranted.”

“Deference?” Danny scoffed. “I’ll tell you what, you explain to me how Octa was all a part of your big plan and then we’ll talk about deference. And while you’re doing that, you can tell me all about your trip abroad.”

Dylan shook his head, peeling a layer of skin off his lip with his teeth. The next layer immediately froze and he swiped his tongue over it to soothe the sting. “I told you, the details are still up in the air —”

“Pull them back down,” said Danny. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

But Dylan just continued to chew at the corner of his lip, glaring at Danny, who had donned that infuriatingly smug smirk he was so comfortable with, from the corner of his eye.

“Oh, come on, look at you, you’re practically chomping at the bit. You want to tell me, you want us to be a part of this, the planning and the plotting and all the preliminary work. Why hold off now? Just, you know. Let it out.”

Again, Dylan shook his head.

And then, without warning, he shifted gears and a smile flickered across his face. “You know what, Atlas?” He held his arms spread wide. “I’ve already told you everything you need to know.”

And he clapped his hands together and rounded the corner alone, for Danny had juddered to a stop.

“Wait,” Danny panted a moment later, scrambling to catch up, “wait —” his fingers dug suddenly into Dylan’s arm and Dylan felt his shoulder being yanked down and back as Danny slipped on a thick layer of compacted snow and ice “— oh shit —”

“Whoa —”

“— sorry —”

“Careful,” Dylan snickered, righting Danny on the sidewalk with a firm grip on his arm. He readjusted Danny’s scarf, which had unraveled slightly when he lost balance, and snickered again when Danny knocked his hands away.

“Wait,” he pressed on breathlessly, “what do you mean, you already told me everything I need to know?”

“You’re an intelligent kid, you’ll figure it out.”

“Your patronizing me is hilarious, really original, especially when I just made you breakfast while you drooled like an infant onto your couch.”

“A very good breakfast.”

“Thank you. What have you told me? You haven’t told me anything.”

There were pink splotches on the apples of his cheeks and his eyes were wide and bright and darting all over Dylan’s face, cataloguing, interpreting, searching for some small hint or clue or hint of a hint or clue.

“You want a hot chocolate?” said Dylan, suppressing a smile and indicating the quaint little café they were passing by.

“I — no, I don’t want — are you twelve?”

“It’s cold, it’s snowy. It sounds good. Let’s get a hot chocolate.”

He stepped around Danny and chuckled quietly at his incredulous expression.

It was warm and cozy in the shop, a collection of wooden barstools and a short counter with an old cash register the only other things inside, besides the barista, who smiled pleasantly up at him with clear, sky-blue eyes.

“Hello, how can I help you?”

“Hi,” Dylan said, smiling back and feeling quite fond of the world. He peered up at the handwritten menu anchored to the wall. He really wasn’t hungry, but a hot chocolate did sound good. Warm. “Can I get a large hot chocolate?”

“Of course,” she said, and tapped the register once. “Would you like the regular or one of our flavored options?”

“Depends, what flavored options do you have?”

The bell above the door tinkled.

“I’ve got it,” Danny said from behind him.

“We’ve got caramel, peppermint, raspberry —”

Danny squeezed in and leaned against the counter on Dylan’s right. “You haven’t actually told me anything, and —”

“Shh, don’t interrupt,” said Dylan, gesturing for the barista to continue. “Sorry. You were saying?”

“It’s no problem,” she beamed. “So, we have caramel, peppermint, raspberry, white chocolate, dark chocolate, matcha, toasted marshmallow —”

“I’ll take that one, the toasted marshmallow.”

“It’s really good,” she assured him, tapping the register a second time.

“I’m trusting you.”

She smiled again and turned to Danny. “Can I get you anything, sir?”

He glanced up at the chalkboard. “Latte.”

“Of course. Any —”

“No flavors, just the latte. Grande. Medium. Whatever.”

“No problem. That’ll be seven dollars and sixty-eight cents.”

Dylan reached into his pockets, but Danny nudged him out of the way. “I’ve got it.”

He pulled a ten from his wallet and passed it over the counter. “Keep the change.”

“Thank you!” the barista said, practically glowing, and then disappeared into the back to make their drinks.

“Very charitable of you,” said Dylan, impressed.

“Thanks.” And Danny slid the wallet across the counter to him with one finger.

“Oh.” Dylan laughed despite himself. “Sure. No problem.” He pocketed it.

Then he swiveled and rested his arm on the counter so that he mirrored Danny. “You were saying? Rudely, I might add.”

Danny flicked the jibe away like an irritating fly buzzing around his nose. “I was saying, you haven’t actually told me anything, and you’re just hoping I’ll waste a bunch of time and valuable energy chasing my own tail so that yours is free to wag all over the city.”

“Interesting metaphor.”

“My point stands.”

“If you say so.”

Danny stared at him, and Dylan stared back, until the former broke the war of wills, snuck a look at the barista, who was busy bustling about heating up the milk, leaned in closer, and lowered his voice.

“Is it big?”

Dylan chewed on his tongue, thinking. Debating how much he wanted to divulge. “It could be.”

“Cop out,” said Danny, but waved his hand through what little air there was between them — another bothersome fly. “Is it local?”

Dylan let out a short laugh and decided to toss him a bone. “No.”

“Good,” said Danny, and his shoulders might have collapsed with relief if he didn’t have such a tight hold on them. “I’m starting to get claustrophobic.”

“There’s an entire city at your disposal and you’re getting claustrophobic?” said Dylan.

“An entire city?” Danny repeated skeptically. “No, no, no. An entire apartment. Occasionally the park. Dark corners and bars and alleyways, maybe, but not an entire city.”

A thin tongue of guilt lashed up in Dylan’s chest. “Look —”

“I’m not complaining — okay, I am complaining,” he amended at the look on Dylan’s face, “but that’s the price we pay, right, to be able to do what we do.” He fixed his gaze on Dylan’s. “To help people who can’t help themselves.”

Dylan felt his ears start to ring. The dread monotonous beeping of an EKG. The soft grip around his hand go slack.

“…but we’re bored,” Danny was saying, as Dylan shook himself back to the present. “We haven’t been able to do what we do since London. We want to help.”

Dylan swallowed. “You will. I promise. Just give me a bit more time.”

A small shadow of displeasure crossed Danny’s face, but it was gone as soon as it had come. He looked instead at the barista, who returned with two recycled cardboard cups and the ever-present, effervescent smile.

“Here you are,” she said, handing them their drinks one at a time. “One medium latte, and one large toasted marshmallow hot chocolate. I toasted the marshmallows on top, too. Gives it a bit more of a kick.”

“Thank you, that’s very sweet,” said Dylan, matching her smile. “Take care.”

“You, too. Stay warm.”

Danny nodded politely and together they walked back out into the snow with a faint tinkle from the bell over the door.

Dylan sipped at his hot chocolate as they walked along, dwarfed by dilapidated old apartment buildings and artfully distressed storefronts. It was very good. Creamy and sweet and rich, and spread warm tingles all through his body, juxtaposing the winter chill nicely.

“How bored are you?” he asked, wandering into the corner of a park overflowing with scavenging pigeons and kids, college-age and below, enjoying the second snow day in a row.

“I’m looking forward to doing my taxes.”

“You pay taxes?”

“Of course I pay taxes. That’s how they —”

“— got Capone, I know,” said Dylan, grinning.

“I could break out if I wanted to, that could be interesting, I suppose. ‘Infamous Magician J. Daniel Atlas Escapes Guantanamo Bay in Broad Daylight’. It has a certain ring to it,” said Danny thoughtfully.

Dylan snorted into the lid of his hot chocolate. “Club Fed, maybe. Besides, you’d be helpless fodder for the feeding frenzy in Gitmo.”

“You think I can’t handle myself?” said Danny, his eyes flashing.

“A discussion for another time,” said Dylan. He slowed to a dawdle and Danny immediately fell back to keep pace. “If you were going to work this park, right now, what would you do?”

“What do you mean?” said Danny, lowering his voice to match Dylan’s.

“If I told you to put on a show, right here in this park, right now, what would you do?”

“Who’s my target?”

“Them,” said Dylan, gesturing widely at the park-goers, strolling along at their leisure, happy and at ease. “Any of them. All of them.”

“As a distraction, or what?”

“As a show. You are a showman, aren’t you?” said Dylan, a wry smile on his face. “J. Daniel Atlas? Or have you already forgotten what it’s like to perform… just for the sake of performing?”

Danny came to a full stop. His lips were tight and his eyebrows high on his forehead, and he seemed to be chewing on his cheek. “All right. You want a show, Shrike? You’ve got a show.” And with that, he whipped his scarf from his neck, backing up into the center of the small area, where a few paths converged like spokes on a bike wheel. “Just remember, when you get all wound up about causing a scene, that this was your idea.”

“Cross my heart.”

Dylan tucked himself away beneath an inconspicuous light post, leaning up against the cold, grooved metal and settling in to watch. But before completely fading into the background, he called,

“Atlas? Try to be at least a little bit discreet.”

In response, Danny merely quirked his eyebrow, and then unraveled the scarf with a dramatic flourish. At least three people looked around at the snap of color through the grey air.

Dylan chuckled.

“Excuse me!” Danny’s voice cut clearly through the park. Everyone who hadn’t looked at the scarf, now looked at Danny. “Good afternoon, hello, hello, yes, hello —” for those familiar with social media, the college students and kids, mostly, had already begun to yell out in shock as his distinct features registered in their memories as ‘Horseman’ “— hello…. Wow, what a warm welcome, thank you…. And since we somehow seem to have finally managed to temporarily transport the North Pole into the city, I have to say, it’s very much appreciated. But let’s be honest, if that means Santa visits us first, I can’t complain.”

A few of the younger children let out tinkling little laughs. Danny winked at them. “Everyone knows he gives out the best presents first, right?”

They nodded, their parents having relented to their insistent begging and allowed them to crowd around Danny with the others in an attempt to get closer to the magic. To see how it’s done. Already too close, already fooled, and happily so.

“So.”

Danny’s empty fist was his closed mouth. He kept his lips tight at all times, like something was straining to burst forth from behind them, something so magical and amazing and awe-inspiring that the audience simply had to wait and watch and see. See if he would share his secret.

“Who here likes magic?”

The crowd cheered, drawing the attention of passersby and slowly growing its ranks as they meandered in to see what all the fuss was about, phones and tablets out, recording, streaming live.

“Good, me too. If you couldn’t tell,” added Danny, and they laughed. “But only, like, really good magic, right? Nothing lame or boring or commonplace like, say, making a bird appear out of thin air —” and scrunching up his scarf in two hands, he folded it over and over itself until, from the very center, emerged the head, wings, tail, and rough, orange feet of a living pigeon, which took flight immediately after he tossed it into the air, to the amazement of the crowd, no matter what Danny said about its run-of-the-mill reputation “— no, no, no, because we’ve all seen that a million times, and birds are kind of dirty, right? Especially city pigeons, you don’t want one of those sitting on your arm. Does anyone have any hand sanitizer or anything, so I can — sterilize my… yes, thank you….”

A young woman about Danny’s age hurried forward and offered him a bottle of clear, viscous fluid.

“What’s your name?” he asked her, loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Stacy,” the girl said breathlessly.

“Oh, really? Is that your mom back there?” The crowd groaned. “I know, I know, sorry, I couldn’t resist,” he said, properly, playfully abashed.

“Yeah, actually,” Stacy said, blushing and nodding at the middle-aged woman she’d been watching with, which worked for the audience — they laughed.

“Really? Wow. What a horrible day for you,” said Danny, and they laughed again. “Anyway, thank you, Stacy, here you go….” He handed back her sanitizer bottle. “Oh, wait — before you go, Stacy, would you mind picking a card for me?”

He extended a deck of cards he’d drawn from his coat pocket, fanned out neatly in both hands.

“Normal deck, look —” he displayed the faces to the audience “— and, any card — good, great — no, don’t tell me what it is, just show the audience, I won’t peek, I promise….” He turned his head away while Stacy held up the card so everyone could see — the Jack of hearts. “Did everyone see it?” he asked, still looking the other direction.

They all murmured their assent.

Danny turned back around. “Great, now — no, don’t show me! Come on, Stacy, no wonder the song is about your mom. Just kidding. Wow, look at that, you’ve got a great smile.”

Good save.

“Now if you could just put the card back into the deck face down, wherever you want…. Perfect.” He quickly shuffled the deck and stuffed it back into the box, and then dropped the box back into his coat pocket. “That’s it,” he said, holding out his hands. “Cool trick, huh?”

More laughter. Dylan shook his head, trying not to smile and failing miserably.

“Anyway, thanks for your help, Stacy,” he went on, and took her hand with one of his to shake, the other gripping her fraternally at the back of the neck. “Give your mother my love.” He dropped his hand to her back and helped her return to the crowd’s edge like a true gentleman, Stacy, all the while, blushing beet red and fluttering her eyelashes.

“Now, where were we? Oh, yes.” He clapped his hands together, revolving slowly now as to address the people who had taken up the space behind him. “We like good magic, not that low-brow stuff. Magic that helps people, that makes the world a better, more fun place to live in, yes? Yes. Pigeons, not so much. Hm. I don’t know — what do you guys think? What makes you happy?”

There was a variety of responses: “Movies!” or “Music!” or “Food!” or “Sex!”

But a little girl in the front squeaked out “Money!” and everyone laughed again, including Danny.

“Money, all right, money definitely makes me happy,” said Danny. “Do you want to come up and help me with this next trick, sweetheart?”

She nodded and nearly fell over herself in her rush to join him, her overlarge, patched and frayed coat getting caught under her feet.

“Let’s see what we can do with _money_ ….” He patted at his pockets. “If I have any money — Christmas-shopping, you know,” he added, to yet more laughter. “Aha!” And he withdrew Dylan’s wallet once more from his pocket — Dylan dropped his head briefly into his hand, exasperated — and pulled another ten-dollar bill from within. “Here, sweetheart — what’s your name?”

“Lily!”

“Lily? That’s a pretty name. Lily, how would you like to have this ten-dollar bill?”

She nodded fervently, her brown curls bouncing around her cheeks.

“All right, here you go — wait. What's the magic word?”

“…abracadabra!” Lily yelled confidently.

Danny’s controlled expression broke, truly broke, for the first time. Two pink bursts appeared on his cheeks as he laughed. “I was aiming for ‘please’, but that works, too.”

Lily happily took the bill, blissfully unaware of everyone else snickering.

“What do you think, Lily, is it real?” he asked.

She nodded again. “Yeah.”

“You want to show everyone?”

She held the bill up and then ran over to her parents, who were chuckling in slight embarrassment, and handed them the ten. Her dad bent over, took it from her momentarily, and yelled out over everyone’s heads, “It’s real!”

“Thank you, Mr. Lily’s Dad, for confirming that for us,” said Danny. “Lily, do you want to come back and — so we can do the —”

She looked uncertainly at her dad, and held tightly to the bill. He waved her on.

“It’s all right,” Danny said, laughing again, “I promise, you can keep it when it’s over.”

She walked back reluctantly.

“So, we’ve got a real ten-dollar bill, here — no, you can hold onto it,” Danny assured her when she tried to hand it back to him. “Now, that’s not a lot, is it, ten dollars? I mean, I suppose, depending how you spend it, that could either be ten slices of pizza, or it could be, let’s say, one-one hundredth of a good TV. Well, I think, if we’re smart, we can multiply this ten dollars into — what do you think, Lily, a hundred? Does a hundred dollars sound good to you?”

Lily jumped and clapped her hands excitedly, squealing, “Yes!”

“Okay, Lily, one hundred dollars. So, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to hold on to this end, and I’m going to hold on to this end — hold it tight — ready? And —”

A short, crisp _rip_ — and the ten was torn in two. Lily’s face fell.

“What?” said Danny, looking at her in exaggerated shock. “Now you’ve got one ten, and another ten! That’s twenty!”

“No, it’s ruined!” she yelled back.

The audience laughed.

“Well, let’s try again — you rip your half, and I’ll rip mine — there you go….” She followed his instructions sadly, and now there were four pieces of ruined bill.

They continued ripping until there were ten pieces, and then Danny told Lily to hold out her hands like she was trying to catch water from a faucet. Then he dumped all the pieces into her tiny grasp, and told her to grip it tight.

“Just like that,” he said, closing her hands over one another with his own, like she’d caught a firefly and he was helping to keep it inside. “And we’re gonna put your two hands in —” he shook her hands toward the front audience and she exploded with tremulous giggles as her entire body shook, too “— and your two hands out —” he shook them toward the back audience “— and your two hands in, and we’ll _shake them all about_ —” they wiggled together like a dog shaking off water after a long bath “— we’ll do the hokey pokey and we’ll turn ourselves around —” they spun under their clasped hands, a severely mismatched two-person game of London Bridge “— and that’s what it’s all about!”

Danny removed his hands from hers.

She looked up at him, her face flushed and her eyes glimmering with delight.

“Come on, Lily, what are you waiting for, an invitation? Open up,” he said, tapping the back of her hand.

And when Lily peeled her hands apart, she let out another squeal: the ten pieces of ten-dollar bill had become one whole hundred-dollar bill.

The audience cheered as she ran off to her parents and launched herself into their arms, tripping again on her old coat.

“You’re welcome,” said Danny dryly, his tone not at all matching the amusement on his face.

“Thank you!” she cried back, too late.

Danny held his hands out wide, shrugged, and addressed the crowd. “Well. I’m out of tens, so it looks like the rest of you are out of luck. Sorry.”

So, it seemed, were they.

Dylan could see, just over the heads of the audience, a couple police officers beginning to spread about the perimeter of the park. Quickly and quietly, he trashed his empty hot chocolate cup and ducked away from his lamppost, slipping into the shadow of the bushes. One furtive glance at Danny, which was returned with the merest of flickering looks, conveyed the situation. But he continued to talk and amaze while Dylan skirted the pathway, all the way out of the audience, where Danny’s voice didn’t quite reach, but he could hear the static murmur over the officers’ radios.

“…feds on the way, hold your position until they give the order….”

Dylan slipped a handful of scarves, unnoticed, from a table hawking ugly knockoffs, and made his way toward the nearest pair of officers. Each of them had one hand resting on their holster, but it was light and lazy, barely a grip at all, and Dylan could see that the safety was still toggled on the gun of the officer closest.

Striking forward, Dylan shoved one scarf into the mouth of this officer, yanked the collapsible baton from his belt, and whacked the other officer over the hand that had immediately reached for his gun. He dropped the baton, stuffed a second scarf in the second mouth, ripped the handcuffs from each of their waists and with some deft maneuvering, managed to tangle their hands up in a knot of metal chain and rings. Yanking them behind a bush by the cuffs, he left them stuffed under the branches in the dirt to struggle futilely, dropping the key at their feet.

“Sorry, man,” he said sincerely, indicating the rapid bruise swelling on the officer’s knuckles, and then clambered out of the bushes.

Two down, four more to go.

There was a burst of flame from the center of the crowd, and everyone ‘ooh’ed and ‘ahh’ed, giving Dylan enough time to wrangle the next pair around and into one of the enclosed winter entrances of a temporarily-shuttered restaurant, where they looked frantically around, blind due to the Santa hats Dylan had stolen off two decorative snowmen and pulled low over their eyes, gagged and bound just as hopelessly as the other two.

Four down, two left.

They were trickier — the lack of radio response must have put them on higher alert, and Dylan nearly found himself staring down the barrel more than once, before he managed to wrap one of the remaining scarves around the muzzle and with a firm twist-and-yank, rip it from the officer’s hands and flip it harmlessly into the bushes. He bound them up and pushed them down into an open restaurant cellar and slid smoothly back into the park, taking up his place at the lamppost, and silently urging Danny to notice him. It didn’t take long.

“Well, it’s been wonderful working with you all, but I am now completely broke and very thirsty — that can happen sometimes when you spit fire, trust me, it’s a completely natural reaction —” More laughter. They adored him now, were positively smitten. “— so, unfortunately, it is time for me to go.”

The resounding, drawn-out ‘aw’ made Danny nod and smile, even as he waved them down.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll be hearing from me and the other, less attractive Horsemen soon. In the mean time, the holiday magic should be enough to tide you over,” he said, winking again at the littlest audience members.

He made to back out of the circle he’d created for himself, and then paused. “Oh — wait, I’m missing something….” He pawed at his pockets, withdrew the box of playing cards, and frowned. “This feels a bit lighter than it should…. Don’t you think?” He handed the box to a man nearby. “It feels empty, right?”

The man nodded.

“But it wasn’t empty when I put it in my pocket, you all saw that, right…. Could you just — yeah, open it for me, to make sure? Oh — here, you should probably open it — this way, just in case. Magician’s toys, you know, always a safety hazard….”

The man plucked the lid out of its place, holding the box away from his face, squinting just in case —

But nothing happened. The box was empty.

Everyone laughed again, and Dylan used the cover of the noise to wave him on.

Danny discreetly acknowledged the sign, just a flaring of his nostrils, and then took the box from the man, frowning. “Huh,” he said, showing the crowd and turning it back to himself. “That’s weird….”

Then he turned the box back to the audience, and with a _pop_ it began shooting out cards like a supercharged printer, spraying them in a stream over the heads of the crowd at Stacy and her mother, who screamed in surprise.

“My apologies, Stacy, I forgot!” Danny yelled over the amazed shouting of the audience, as what seemed like hundreds of Jacks of hearts rained down upon them. Stacy’s mother grabbed at her forehead, where one was stuck stubbornly between her eyebrows for everyone to see. “Was that your card?”

The crowd roared, and Danny bowed, and Dylan, spotting a series of blue and red flashes coming up the street, urged him on with a frantic hand.

“My name is J. Daniel Atlas! Enjoy your holidays, and we’ll see you soon!”

And he whipped his coat off and around, over his head, and let it flutter down, down, down to the pavement…. He had disappeared.

As the crowd screamed its approval, Danny snuck up on Dylan’s right, practically buried in the bushes.

He was breathless and pink from running, but his face, though back to its composed tension, was somehow still alight. Triumphant.

Dylan looked over his shoulder. “This way.” He jerked his head to the right and slipped through the crowd, trusting the bodies to hide them and swearing, not for the first time in his life, at the thick, distinctive curls that grew stubbornly out of his head. Danny followed so close Dylan could hear him panting in his ear, feel the sticky heat still emanating off him, a mixture of the show itself and his rapid exit.

They broke through the crowd in seconds and ghosted down the street to the nearest subway station.

Danny immediately pulled out his phone, while Dylan paced up and down the platform, trying to find an arrival clock. The next train was in two minutes, to Coney Island.

Good. They could ride down and switch and head back up, just to shake off any tail they might’ve grown. He said as much to Danny when he jogged back down to meet him, but he was absorbed in his phone, fingers flying across the keyboard so fast that they blurred.

“What’s going on?”

“News outlets are blowing up, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and ABC all have pedestrian footage. They found the cops,” he tacked on, allowing a small smirk.

“Jesus, that was fast.”

“‘NYPD Trussed Up Like Christmas Trees — Horsemen Escape,’” Danny read off. “ _Horsemen?_ One, one Horseman, that entire show was me —”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dylan shouted over the roar of the approaching train. “Get on and we can talk about it when you’re secured.”

And they slipped through the open doors and pressed themselves to the connecting set at the end of the train, out of sight of the windows and any police that might be looking in.

With a cool ding, the doors slid shut and the train jerked forward. Dylan settled against the doors. Danny pocketed his phone, the signal gone.

“Wallet.”

“Oh — right.”

“Thank you.”

They looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes, silently acknowledging the slight smile pulling at their mouths.

Dylan’s heart was pounding, adrenaline rushing through his veins like cool fire, the ragged hiss of air speeding in and out of his chest nearly loud enough in his ears to drown out the grating of the train on the track as it shepherded them far away from the park and floundering officers.

He was flying, borne up by the weightlessness of Danny’s success, by the ringing of the crowd’s cheers echoing around his skull.

But he said nothing, and neither did Danny. They simply rode together in victorious silence, no longer bored — not for the moment, anyway — and Dylan thought of nothing, blissfully, savoring the sweet, electric hum running like a current over his skin, bumping shoulders with Danny as the train rocked them side-to-side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This definitely won't be finished by Christmas. But this has been a shitfuck of a year, so the holiday season ends when I say so. Happy Neverending Holidays.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy continued Holidays! I hope you all had a wonderful actual holiday. Mine was fairly quiet. Usually, we open presents in the early morning, and then all my dad's side of the family (two uncles and their wives and kids, and my dear, dear grandma) meet at my uncle's house for breakfast and more presents, and then we return to our individual homes for naptime, and then go back to my uncle's later at night for games and dinner.
> 
> This year we all stayed home and had breakfast and dinner separate from everyone. Thanksabunch, COVID. I'm gonna go ahead and blame the lack of snow on COVID too, because why not.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoy. I would've liked to have posted ON Christmas, but I wasn't sure it was ready. But now it is. Hurray.

Dylan shivered deep down to the bone as he sped the three blocks from the subway to his apartment, his hands shoved deep in his jeans pockets, his shoulders hunched to protect his ears from the still, frigid morning air. The salt on the sidewalks had melted most of the ice and snow overnight, so the trip wasn’t as dangerous as it could have been, and he only slipped once before reaching the front door to his apartment.

He fumbled with his keys again — fucking numb fingers — and slid inside before the door had opened more than a foot wide, letting out an enormous, shaky sigh at the sudden warmth of not-outside.

His legs wouldn’t bend as well as they should, so he ascended the winding staircase much slower than he would’ve liked, and was shivering again once he’d climbed onto his landing. More fumbling, and the door creaked open.

Dylan hobbled to the heater and quickly turned it to its highest setting, super be damned, fire safety be _damned_ , and stripped off his clothes, tossing them carelessly to the floor in a haphazard trail as he made a beeline for the bathroom, where he jammed the knob to its hottest and flung himself under the steaming spray. He stood there for he didn’t know how long, swearing up and down, any language he could think of, while tremors rocked through his muscles and hot water like knives sluiced over his skin, spilling from his hair over his eyes and mouth, into his ears, the hollows in his collarbone, down his shoulders and arms and chest, his legs, pooling at his feet. Fuck, he was cold.

Once feeling had returned to his extremities, he set about scrubbing himself clean and then stood there in the water some more, soaking up all the heat it had to offer before it started to fade.

He climbed out, toweled off, brushed teeth and hair, and stepped into the veritable sauna that had become his apartment. Switching the heater down lower so it didn’t give out so early in the season, he put on a pot of coffee and opened the fridge to scrounge up something to stave off the building hunger.

But instead of old Chinese, he found himself staring into a fully-stocked fridge. Eggs, milk, butter, some sort of pink fish, ground beef, a cellophane-wrapped half-tray of sausage patties, the leftover pot of chili, deli turkey and ham, cheese slices, unnamable leafy greens, fruit, _mustard_ …. Dylan shut the door. He stood for a long moment, one hand on the handle, before crossing into his bedroom and picking up his phone, still plugged in and charging on the bedside table.

He had been bombarded with texts since leaving the previous morning.

“Jesus Christ, Lula,” he groaned, palming his face in disbelief.

No less than three hundred and twenty-six text messages, in addition to ten missed calls and four voicemails from the Girl Horseman. The Horsewoman, as she sometimes preferred to be called, depending on what shoes she was wearing.

‘I know where you live.’

‘I’m coming over.’

‘Jack said not to bother you so I’ll wait until the morning.’

‘I’m here.’

‘Your building is very easy to break into.’

‘Your super is a dick.’

‘I’m inside. Where are you?’

‘Why wasn’t your apartment locked?’

‘Who leaves without locking their front door? Thieves, Dylan.’

‘…I get it now.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Do I smell toast?’

‘Oh God I’m having a stroke’

‘No wait you at least have a toaster’

‘Dylan this is so sad’

‘Wait these cookies are really good.’

‘I’m taking some to Jack and Merritt.’

‘Did you make these?’

‘Where are you?’

He scrolled all the way to the bottom.

‘You guys are fucking dicks.’

‘See you in a bit.’

Her voicemails covered just as broad an emotional range. A very loving, very caring, then very angry range. The last: “YOU GUYS ARE FUCKING DICKS!”

Then there were around twenty texts from Jack and a single voicemail, echoing Lula’s worry and frustration in a more composed, subdued manner (“Hey, Dyl, just checking in. Saw the news. Give us a call, yeah?”), and one text from Merritt:

‘I knew you played favorites.’

Dylan scrubbed his face with the heels of his palms. There would have to be a conversation about that today, despite the winking face that belied the seriousness of Merritt’s text. He was certainly the easiest of the Horsemen to get along with, even if it meant at times that he knew more about Dylan than Dylan knew about Dylan, and even if he occasionally got that glint in his eye that warned of some sort of exasperating trouble further on down the line.

He dropped the phone, but just as he did, a text came in from Danny:

‘Stop being stubborn and have a sandwich.’

Dylan opened it to respond — _don’t fucking stock my fridge_ — but a second text came through:

‘Stop.’

Scowling, Dylan nonetheless dropped the phone once more onto the table and went back into the kitchen.

Now that he knew there was something to see, he spotted the bag of potatoes on the counter, and when he opened the cabinet found bread, multiple and varied cans of soup, a jar of peanut butter, and another box of instant oatmeal.

That’s what he took down, and poured into one of the bowls, and stuck in the microwave, alternating between being furious and shoving those warm feelings deeper into the black. He leaned against the counter while the microwave hummed, his arms folded over his chest.

He hadn’t slept much, sat in front of Danny’s laptop at the island counter, watching the news and flicking through an online police scanner while Danny tossed and turned and snored like a buzz saw on his aging sofa bed, wrapped up impossibly in three different blankets, and he’d left early, before Danny had begun to stir. It had still been dark, which suited him just fine — easier to stick to the shadows when everything was shadow, fewer people walking the streets — but morning had arrived cold and clear by the time he reached his station, and brought with it the exhaustion he’d left on the stoop of Danny’s apartment.

He wolfed down the small breakfast, savagely avoiding all of the food now glaring at him from around the kitchenette, washed and dried his bowl and spoon and stuck them back in their proper places, and collapsed onto the couch, warm and cushy, and fell fast into a light doze, pricked and poked by strange, muffled sounds and blurred faces, hidden in thick drifts of snow and dark, murky brown water.

When he woke — much more gracefully than yesterday — he glanced at his watch, and then outside at the streets still lined with white. There were things he would have to get done before four, things he hadn’t planned on doing for another week or so, and things he wasn’t much looking forward to doing without a coat. Still, they were things that had to be done.

He shot off two quick texts, put on an extra pair of socks and two more long-sleeved shirts under his two Academy sweaters, slid on a hoodie over it all and lifted the hood so it darkened his face, grabbed the old Nokia he kept taped to the top of the drawer of his bedside table, stuffed one of the remaining cookies into his mouth, and headed out, feeling a bit like a microwaved marshmallow Peep.

It was still bitingly cold, despite Dylan’s many layers, and the subways weren’t much better. He kept his head down and his hands in his pockets, trying not to shiver as the train pushed underground, tunneling beneath the streets to the heart of the city. He climbed out at Penn Station and immediately began scanning the weekend commuters for the easiest grab.

Settling on a tall man in an overcoat, who was at the moment berating a bemused MTA worker at the top of his lungs, Dylan strode quickly up the expansive walkway, letting himself be buffeted about by the weekend traffic flow, letting it frustrate him a bit so that when he fell into the man his face was a little hot and flushed.

“Oh — man — I’m so sorry,” Dylan burst out, scrambling up and extending his hand to the man, who had toppled over and was rolling into his front, swearing. “Here, let me help you —”

The man pushed his hands away. “— I’m fine, I’ve got it —”

Dylan shrugged and stood back. “It’d be a lot easier to navigate this place if the employees had any brains,” he said, shaking his head derisively at the MTA worker, who, upon their collision, had stepped back in shock and was now looking at them both with a mix of resignation and anger. “I’ve been looking for track seventeen for ten minutes — if I miss this train, I swear, someone’s gonna hear from my lawyer.”

“Tell me about it,” said the man, brushing off his coat as he climbed awkwardly to his feet. “I’ve got a flight in an hour and no one can tell me where the fuck the exit to the Thirty-Third Street taxi stand is —”

“As I said, sir,” the employee snapped, “if you will follow this pathway all the way down and take a —”

“And _I_ said I just came from that way, and there was no exit!”

“Here, man — here’s your suitcase —” Dylan rolled him the tiny leather case. “Sorry, I gotta go find this train.”

“Thank you —”

“No problem.” He patted him on the back. “Good luck.”

“You too.”

Dylan headed off in the opposite direction toward the ticket kiosks, only glancing back over his shoulder to watch when the employee called after the man, “Sir! You dropped something!” and waved a crisp fifty in the air. The man either didn’t hear or didn’t care, because he kept walking. Dylan, however, smiled as the employee shrugged and pocketed the bill.

Fingering the foreign wallet now safe in his hoodie pouch, Dylan made his way smoothly up to the nearest teller. He purchased a ticket with one of the many cards tucked inside, then pulled all of the (considerable) cash from its inner fold and trashed the rest. Then he found the TGI Friday’s tucked away on the upper level and ducked inside, taking a seat at the crowded bar next to a man in shirtsleeves and black trousers, his shiny, half-bald pate gleaming in the dark track lighting overhead.

“Oh, sorry — this seat’s —” Fuller paused, and then a friendly smile spread across his face. “— for you. Hey.”

“Hey.”

Fuller looked for a moment as if he wanted to pull him into a hug, but seemed to think better of it and refrained, for which Dylan was grateful. He did, however, throw a side glance at Dylan’s puffy torso in amusement. “Let yourself go a bit, haven’t you?”

Dylan tugged at his many collars and grinned up at the TV bolted to the wall, where UCF and UMass were locked in a dead heat at 39-39. “It’s the sweaters, I promise.”

“Where’s your coat?” Fuller demanded, and gestured politely at the bartender for a refill. “It’s colder than a witch’s tit out there.”

“Ah.” Dylan hedged slightly on how much to say, firmly ignoring the way his chest tightened at Fuller’s concern. “It was unavailable to me at the moment of my leaving.”

“I’ll take that at surface value,” said Fuller.

“Probably a good idea,” Dylan agreed.

They laughed, but Fuller’s visible cheek had given an uncertain twitch that told Dylan how nervous he really was.

“You think you were tailed?” he muttered.

The bartender sidled up at that moment with another ice-filled glass for Fuller, and he fixed his eye on Dylan as a steady stream of brown-gold whiskey poured from the bottle upturned in his hand. “What can I get for you?”

“Whatever he’s having,” he said, and sipped from his glass with relief when it appeared at his hand on a damp cocktail napkin.

“Anything to eat?”

“Nah, I’m good, thanks.”

And the bartender wandered back to a woman in a nice skirt suit at the other end of the bar.

“No,” Fuller said, once he was out of earshot. “I checked the entire way, doubled back as much as I could, but….” He let out a long breath. “I’ve only got an hour for lunch and I spent twenty minutes covering my tracks, so….”

Dylan nodded and pulled at his drink. It tasted like oil, but it fizzled and popped all the way down, and that was enough to satisfy.

“I need to know how much they have on us,” he said, using the kick of the whiskey to grind it out.

Fuller let out a long, strained sigh and rubbed the back of his head. “It’s not a lot. The street performance yesterday was the first we’ve heard from Atlas since the Tressler arrest, and we had a couple officers on the scene to track him, but they got tied up. I assume that was you,” he said to his glass.

“No one was hurt —”

“That’s how I knew it was you.” The hint of a smile.

Dylan nodded. “And the others?”

“We catch wind of one of a handful of IP addresses associated with Reeves occasionally, and we almost traced her to Jersey last month, but the house it originated in was empty. And rigged,” he added, twisting his hand to discreetly display a small, shiny burn on the back of his hand.

“Ah, man. I’m sorry,” said Dylan, attempting and failing to screw his face up into something contrite.

“Sure you are.” Fuller sighed again. “Wilder and McKinney were spotted uptown a couple days ago. They come across pretty frequently, and we’re pretty sure we’ve narrowed down Wilder’s residence to one of a couple places in Williamsburg, but every time we send a couple guys on a stakeout, they come back with nothing to report, so we can’t get cause for a warrant. Which is better than when we try McKinney, I suppose. The last team we sent to one of his suspected hideouts we found a week later in Atlantic City, no idea how they got there, five grand off their budget.”

Dylan drained his glass to keep himself from smiling.

“Then there’s the dark-haired girl that pals around with Wilder. Nothing on her but her first name — Luna —”

“Lula,” Dylan corrected automatically, the scandalized expression that would’ve exploded over Lula’s face upon hearing the error flashing across the forefront of his mind’s eye.

“Really? Well. Then. We didn’t even have that.”

“You —”

“They won’t find out from me,” said Fuller coolly.

“Thanks.”

Fuller nodded. “So, we have _Lula_ , and the fact that you can usually find her around Wilder. They’re smart kids, Dylan. I don’t think you’ve got to worry.”

Dylan snorted into his empty glass, and raised his hand for a refill. “Yeah, probably not.”

“As far as _you_ go,” Fuller went on, pausing briefly while the bartender brought Dylan a fresh drink, “they’re so fucking pissed at you, Rhodes. Cowan is becoming a maniac, he’s obsessed.”

“I’m flattered.”

“I’d keep out of sight for a while. Maybe… Maybe leave the country, find somewhere to settle for a bit, because if they get their hands on you —”

“I did,” said Dylan. “I just got back.”

“Really? That’s… embarrassing. For us, I mean.” His face was a motley mix of furrowed brow and mirth. “Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, and they both chuckled, Fuller letting out a groan at the tail end and rubbing both hands over his face before continuing.

“Well, they’ve got your place in Vegas under surveillance, and the one in Chicago, and Miami. They think they’ve got a lead on one in Cabo.”

Dylan’s lips pursed around his whiskey. He’d liked Cabo. 

“And they’re sure you’re here, but they don’t have a clue where.”

He nodded again. “Thanks, Fuller. I owe you.”

“You’re a good guy,” he said, chancing a direct look. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“You’re going to rethink that in a second.”

Though his eyes didn’t move from the TV, Fuller’s face fell. “Dylan….”

Dylan called for his bill and withdrew the cash in his hoodie. He stood, threw a couple of twenties on the book, enough to cover Fuller’s, too, and tossed back the remaining whiskey in one swallow as Fuller covertly swiped up the ticket included in the bills and peered down at the tiny print.

“What —”

“I need someone there I can trust,” Dylan told him, feeling guiltier by the second. “I’m going to make a few arrangements, and they’ll transfer you down for the rest of the month.”

Fuller’s hands were shaking, and there was a tendon twitching weakly below his cheekbone. “I could lose my job,” he breathed, barely more than a whisper.

“You won’t —”

“I could go to prison for this — hell, I could probably go to prison for _this_ —” he gestured between the two of them.

“I promise you,” said Dylan, pulling a face as B.J. Taylor sank a neat layup, bringing UCF two points up, “nothing will happen, no one will have even the slightest clue. Just do exactly what I tell you, all right?”

He watched Fuller out of the corner of his eye, shaking his head with his fingers pressed to his lips.

“It’s —” he shook his head again, as if not quite able to believe he was about to do what he was about to do “— it’s going to help people? It’s a good thing?”

Dylan tore his gaze from the game to finally look directly into Fuller’s face, pale and sweating. “Yes,” he said simply.

“I suppose I don’t want to know anything else.”

“No, probably not.”

It was like Fuller’s head was posted on a swivel. He couldn’t seem to stop it moving side-to-side, but Dylan could see the cracks starting to ripple through. Fuller swallowed down the rest of his drink, and then the side-to-side became a short, barely noticeable up-and-down, just two distinct changes of direction.

“All right,” he said, lifting his hand to the bartender once more. “All right.”

“…thank you.”

Dylan pushed in his chair, tugged his hood slightly further over his eyes, and headed for the exit.

“You’re right,” Fuller called back, just as he reached the threshold. He didn’t stop, but in the reflection of the windows he could see the newest glass of whiskey slide across the counter, doubly full. “You do owe me.”

Dylan grinned and slipped away into the crowd, running through his mental checklist as he did, ticking Fuller’s name off with a neat black line. He didn’t feel good about it, but Dylan played the long game — he didn’t know how to do anything else. Thirty years spent harboring an all-consuming vendetta had taught him patience and far-sightedness, and he was nothing if not an excellent student.

He checked his watch — 2:30. Right on time. Always right on time.

The two train took him up one stop to Times Square, and then he shuttled over to Grand Central, now sweating underneath all his sweaters, with the whiskey swirling pleasantly through him and the body heat of families enjoying their Saturday, Christmas shoppers and weekend employees all shoved up against him, breathing hot air, laughing and shifting their purchases and briefcases from hand to hand. He squirmed slightly, pulling away and closing his eyes with his forehead pressed to the cool metal standing pole, straining his ears to focus on the screaming of the brakes instead of the light-hearted chatter.

Outside in the cold again wasn’t much better. The air was freezing in his lungs now, the residual warmth all stored up in his many layers siphoning away quicker than he’d hoped, and it was wet and dark and his knuckles bruised from punching unaffected steel… he was fading, gasping in the last inch of free air….

He swallowed and kept walking.

He weaved in and out of buskers and shoppers, loiterers and policemen that were too busy chatting to recognize the face plastered up on every news channel for the past sixteen hours passing them by, head down, hood up. Or maybe they just didn’t care — the holidays were in full gear, garland strung up on light posts, tied neatly together with big, fat red ribbons, holly berries and mistletoe draped from canvas canopies dripping with multicolored lights that twinkled even in the afternoon sun, wreathes full of pinecones and Styrofoam cardinals hung up on every door in sight, the persistent ringing of Salvation Army Santas’ bells and their jolly ‘ho-ho-ho’s a background score to it all.

Dylan stopped next to one of these outside a Chase vestibule, digging in his pockets for a few of the remaining bills.

“Thank you very much, sir!” the Santa chortled jovially, shaking his surprisingly real belly as he went on ‘ho’ing. “And a merry Christmas to you!”

Dylan nodded, managed something of a smile, and dropped a crinkled wad into the red pail. His hand brushed another as he pulled back. “Oh. Sorry —”

“— Sorry — ” said the owner of the hand, who had just deposited a few bills as well.

He looked up and found himself gazing into a pair of very pretty brown eyes.

“Sorry,” he said again, smiling, feeling his face heat up.

“Sorry.” The woman smiled back, her heart-shaped face hugged by long, silky brown hair, and a woolen, burgundy scarf-and-hat set.

“’Scuse me,” said a man trying to throw a couple coins in the pail.

“Sorry,” said Dylan and the woman together, and they both stepped back, giving the Santa and any potential donators some room.

They smiled at each other awkwardly.

“I hope I’m not being too forward by saying hi,” Dylan managed, his breath coming out in a puff of white.

“Not at all,” said the woman. Her cheeks were rosy, and she was nibbling at the corner of her lip like her teeth could keep her from smiling again and giving away too much. “Hi.”

“Dylan,” he said, and held out his hand to shake.

“Lucy.” And she took it. His hand swallowed hers.

“Nice to meet you, Lucy. Do you —” a small, self-deprecating laugh, and he looked somewhat pathetically at the Salvation Army pail “— I dunno, do you come here often?”

Her eyes crinkled with amusement, and so did her nose. “I work here,” she said, pointing her thumb over her shoulder. “Well, in the building, anyway.”

“Aw, on a Saturday and everything?”

That earned him a full laugh. “Yes, unfortunately.”

“What do you do?”

“Oh, this and that,” she said, giving a little half-smile and fluttering her eyelashes playfully.

“You’re going to make me guess?”

“Maybe. What would you guess?”

He looked back at the Chase. “Mmm, bank teller...? Maybe? No? Okay. Hm.” He tapped his lips with the tip of one frozen finger.

Lucy glanced at the gilded doors to the office building, and then at her own watch.

“Oh, no, I’m keeping you.” He put some polite distance between them, stuffing his hands back into his pockets.

“I do have to get back. But maybe you can keep trying later? Maybe tonight, around eight?”

Quickly he flicked through the list of places he kept in the city, their closets, their security — and then thought of the texts on his phone.

“What about tomorrow night, same time? I know a good place downtown.”

“All right, tomorrow night, then. Here’s my number —” she typed it into his phone when he offered it up “— just text me the address.”

“I will,” he said, glancing down at the number, and then up at her face as she slowly backed away toward the double doors. “Bye, Lucy.”

“Bye, Dylan. It was nice to meet you.”

He waved and waited for her to swipe a card to unlock the double doors, and then disappear through.

Then he stuffed his phone into his pocket and continued up the block just long enough to look like he had a destination in mind, and then dipped back into the bowels of Grand Central.

The ride on the four took longer than it should have — sick passenger — and when Dylan climbed the steps once again into the cold, smack in the middle of Brooklyn Heights, he was jogging. He had to force himself to slow to a semi-normal pace out of the park, and when he got to the warehouse in Dumbo half an hour later, one of many decrepit old buildings yet to be restored by the city and turned into a loft, lost in a maze of brick alleys and broken down car lots, it was only just on time, minutes to spare.

It was freezing inside and Dylan decided against taking his hands out of his pockets, huddling up instead in a corner and hoping to coax some heat from the walls as he waited, breathing deeply against the stubborn, anxious clench of his chest.

But he didn’t have to wait for long.

“Dylan!”

Lula’s voice carried through the entire square factory, echoing loudly over old conveyor belts and metal rollers.

“Boss-man! You’ve been AWOL the past couple days, where’ve you been hiding out, dude?”

She was wrapped in a thin black coat and tall boots that came up over the knees of her jeans, a grey beanie pulled loosely over the back of her head and a matching, tasseled scarf trailing messily over her shoulders and around her neck.

“Is that really doing anything for you?” said Dylan, nodding at the scarf and beanie.

“That’s what I said,” said Jack, coming out of the shadows behind her. His nose was pink, but his scarf was at least tight around the bottom half of his face.

“It’s boho,” said Lula matter-of-factly.

“It’s hobo,” corrected Jack. “A dead one. From frostbite.”

“I’ve got gloves!”

“They don’t have _fingers_ , Lula —”

Dylan smiled, one eyebrow quirked at their bickering, even as Lula dropped her hand to the bottom of Jack’s spine and leaned in to flutter her eyelashes on his cheek.

“Quit that —” Jack said, pushing her away, “— I told you, it won’t work on me anymore.”

“Yes, please stop,” said Dylan, only half-joking.

“Oh, don’t worry,” said Lula, pulling away from Jack’s face to glare at Dylan with a curled lip. “I haven’t forgotten about you, my slippery little tadpole friend. I texted you.”

“I saw that.”

“A lot.”

“I saw that, too. Three hundred is a little much, don’t you think?”

“I told her to leave you alone,” said Jack, as Lula advanced on Dylan, who, unfortunately, was still backed into his corner. He slid out of it with his back flush to the stone wall, keeping his eye firmly on Lula, monitoring Jack in the background blur of his focus.

“That’s not what friends do when their friends disappear off the face of the Earth for an extended amount of time,” said Lula, getting closer still. “Or when they show up out of the blue and have a show _without_ me.”

“I’d like to hear that story myself.”

Dylan looked around and saw Merritt in his usual black fedora, leaning up against the wall to his right and picking at his nails.

“Hey, Merritt.”

“Hello, Dylan.” It was a friendly, serene smile that Merritt directed at him, and it made Dylan’s spine curl. “Whichever part first. The disappearing or the performance, I’m not picky.”

“We were worried, man,” said Jack from across the room. “You know, you can’t just disappear like that.”

Dylan stopped — he knew when he was trapped, and they’d formed a closed triangle of bristly concern with Lula at its peak, and there wasn’t much of a way out besides talking. He lifted his hands in surrender, and said,

“I’m sorry, okay?” he looked from face to face to face. “All right? I should’ve texted. It was irresponsible, and I’m sorry.”

“Mmmmno, you’re not,” said Merritt. “But it’s the thought that counts.”

The grin that flashed across Dylan’s face was more teeth and grit than anything else, and Merritt nodded and settled back against the wall, evidently convinced.

“We don’t want you to be sorry,” said Jack, “we just want to —”

“— know you’re alive,” Lula finished. “In case we have to elect another leader. And that will just be an apocalyptic mess, because I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m voting for myself. Come to think of it, Merritt will probably vote for himself —” Merritt nodded fairly “— and Danny would definitely vote for _him_ self, so _you_ —” she pointed at Jack with an accusatory finger “— you’re the weakest link. The Horsemen are breaking up and it’s all your fault.”

“Me? How is it _my_ fault?”

“You’re the most susceptible to suggestion,” she explained. “And weren’t you the one who was all, ‘ooh, J. Daniel Atlas! I’m your biggest fan’?”

“That’s a good point,” said Merritt, eyeing Jack thoughtfully.

“You told her that?” Jack hissed.

Merritt shrugged. “I thought she should be aware of the competition.”

“Danny is not competition —”

“I’m also not dead —” But Dylan’s words went unheard.

“He didn’t need to tell me,” said Lula, “not with those googly eyes you get whenever he does a card trick you don’t know yet.”

“Okay. I do not get googly eyes when Danny does a card trick —”

“Yeah, you do, just a bit,” said Merritt. “They get a bit wider and your mouth kind of —” He affected a convincing expression of slight wonder.

“That’s good, Merritt, really good. You should take up miming —”

“Ah, but how would you learn without me to tell you when you’re so very, very wrong —”

“Great, now Danny’s the leader and Jack is his minion and Merritt, you’ll probably go along with it anyway because you’re bored and lonely —”

“Hey — bored, maybe, but never lonely —”

“— and even if Jack does vote for himself, then we’re all screwed anyway, and where does any of that leave me?” Lula crossed her arms. “Kicked to the curb. The Girl Horseman without a horse.”

“No one is kicking you to the curb,” Dylan said firmly.

“Sexist bastards.”

“Lula.”

“What?!” she snapped.

“I’m still here,” said Dylan.

“…Right. Well.” She unfolded her arms and cleared her throat. “Carry on, then.”

Merritt and Jack rolled their eyes, though Jack’s annoyance was watered down slightly by the smile he tried to hide in his shoulder.

“I will when Atlas gets here, I’d rather this be done all at once,” said Dylan. “Has anyone heard from him?” Something reared up ugly and hot in his chest. He hadn’t seen anyone outside the apartment when he left that morning, but he also hadn’t seen Mabry coming. Not at all, not even a smidgen of a clue.

At that moment, however, Jack and Lula both pointed above his head. Merritt smiled upward at someone Dylan couldn’t see, and he turned around and stepped back.

Danny was leaning against the rail on the balcony, watching the proceedings with both eyebrows raised. “Hi.” He tossed something over the railing, and it fell with a _flump_ to the cement floor like a dead, overlarge bat.

It was Dylan’s coat.

He grimaced up at Danny. “Nice. Really, thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You’re so dramatic, man, I swear,” Lula groused. “Can’t you just walk into a place without making a big deal out of yourself?”

“Can you?” Danny’s voice echoed as he trotted down the stairs to their level.

“…well. If I wanted to.”

“But you don’t want to.”

“…no.”

“Me either. Glad we cleared that up.” He strode into view and stopped next to Dylan, ignoring Lula’s muttering (“This is what I meant! Terrible leader. Good job, Jack.”). “You left your coat.”

“Yeah,” said Dylan. “You were using it.”

“I bought a new one.” He tapped the first button of the long, black suede coat now wrapped around him. “The second new one in two years.”

“Send me the receipt,” said Dylan, smirking.

“Don’t think I won’t.”

“How sweet,” cooed Merritt. “Trading clothing in the dark.”

“When are you going to trade that hat in?” said Danny. “Or are you keeping it for your days at the casino?”

“Maybe I am.”

“And how’s that going for you?”

“As a matter-of-fact, I am only down two thousand, one hundred and thirty-two dollars and ninety-five cents as of today, thank you for asking,” said Merritt, tipping his hat and giving a little bow.

“Don’t mention it.” Danny looked round at Dylan. “Well? Should we get down to business?”

“If you’re all finished pulling each other’s pigtails,” said Dylan calmly.

“For now,” said Merritt.

And suddenly, Dylan was faced with four very capable, very curious magicians, waiting patiently, keen eyes trained on his face. He stepped into the center of the room so he could see them all equally.

“First — I am sorry I’ve been out of touch for the past couple days. The last thing I want is for you all to think you can’t trust me, because you can. Mabry and Macao were my fault — yes, they were, so don’t argue with me — they were my fault, I got blinded by my own shit, and I won’t let it happen again. If there’s anything I can promise you, absolutely, it’s that I will make sure that you — all of you — are safe and secure, first and foremost. The Eye is a considerable resource at our disposal now, but —” his own screaming, the splash of water as divers launched themselves into the Hudson, the inscrutable look on Thaddeus Bradley’s face “— their priority is only your success. They’re not going to fight to make sure you get out of a tight spot if they think it will expose the entire society. That’s my job, all right? So I don’t want you spending time worrying about me when you have better things to be doing. You need to take care of yourselves, and each other.”

Jack and Lula exchanged frustrated glances, but said nothing. Merritt continued to inspect his fingernails, and Danny simply stared out the nearest window, mouth tight.

“That brings me to my next thing.” Dylan looked pointedly between Merritt and Jack. “You two have to be more careful. I’ve got it on good authority that the FBI has narrowed down your apartments, or they’re close —” Jack grinned at Merritt, who looked supremely unconcerned.

“It’s serious,” said Dylan, and his voice growled a bit, just enough for Jack to snap to attention, and for Merritt to finally look up. “I’ll break you out, but I don’t want to if I don’t have to, and if it ends up going further than one of our lawyers can handle, there’s a chance I’ll get caught doing it, and I’m not going to be much use to you all locked up for treason. And they’re gunning for me, in particular.”

“Huh,” said Merritt. “I’d have thought a little vacation might have loosened their panties a little.”

Jack tried not to smirk.

“This isn’t a joke,” Dylan said, struggling to keep the snarl out of his voice. “This isn’t what we do, we don’t mess with people for the fun of it. You get caught, fine. Get out of it however you can. But don’t give them any more reason to want us behind bars.”

“All right, all right,” said Merritt, hands flitting up submissively. “No more gambling nights for the boys in black.”

“Thank you.”

“But you have to admit, that was pretty good,” egged Merritt.

Dylan’s lips twitched. “Not the point.” He reeled himself back in and fell slightly slack. “I know you’re bored, I know you’re getting restless, so am I —”

Danny’s mouth did something odd, but he didn’t say anything, and Dylan ignored him.

“— but try to lay low for just a little bit longer.”

“You mean like you and Danny did,” said Lula.

Dylan ducked his head apologetically. “I hadn’t planned on bringing Atlas out so quickly,” he admitted. “The opportunity presented itself and I took it.”

Danny’s head pivoted sharply so he could settle his shrewd gaze on Dylan’s face, already darting around, looking for the lie. He wouldn’t find it.

“There were a lot of people present because of the snow day — everyone was out, everyone was in a good mood. Plenty of coverage for the news to access, to get the feds and the police riled up. So, yes. I broke my own rule. But I’d planned to, anyway, it just came a couple weeks earlier than expected.”

“We’re talking another show,” said Jack.

“Yes,” said Dylan.

“Do I get to be a part of it this time? Like the whole time?”

A smile spread across Dylan’s face. “Yes. In fact, I’ve got something for you tonight.”

“No fair!” said Lula, while Jack’s face erupted into that brilliant, tongue-between-white-teeth grin. “Merritt and I are just going to sit here with our thumbs up our asses, then, shall we?”

“I’m not a big fan of putting anything near that particular orifice without proper preparation,” drawled Merritt, “but I appreciate the offer.”

Dylan shrugged. “Sorry, Lula. Your time will come.”

“Fine,” she said, and then, in a horrible imitation of Dylan: “‘Your time will come.’ Bleh.”

Dylan laughed. “I promise.”

“But you’ll let us in, right?” said Danny abruptly. “We’re going to be a part of the planning this time. Not just your —”

“— mules?” said Dylan sharply.

“Yes.” Danny stared at him unblinkingly, entirely unabashed.

Dylan softened beneath it, and the hopeful looks on Jack’s and Lula’s — and to some extent, Merritt’s — faces.

“Yes,” he said. “There are parts I won’t be able to do without you. Just give me some time to get what I need, first.”

The others seemed satisfied with that, but Danny, as always, continued to stare, his eyes searching, piercing through whatever weaknesses he might be able to find.

“Atlas?” said Dylan softly, soothing a startled animal. “Are you good with that?”

After a long, tense moment, Danny let out a small sigh. “Yeah.” He looked up at Merritt, Jack, and Lula, and like their faces had strengthened his resolve, straightened slightly in the shoulder. “Yeah, we’re good.” And he clapped Dylan on the back. "For the moment."

“Good.” Dylan offered him a miniscule smile, barely noticeable even at close range, to show his understanding. Then he raised his voice: “Jack, come here.”

“Wait,” said Lula suddenly. “You never told us where you were.”

“Or why you barely responded this week,” said Jack.

Dylan deliberated for a moment, resisting the urge to glance over at Danny, whose eyes he could feel once again boring into the side of his skull.

“I’ve been in Europe,” said Dylan eventually. “Doing some —”

“— recon,” Danny finished, fiddling with his phone.

“For the next job. I wasn’t sure how it would play out, so I didn’t tell you.”

“But it went all right?” said Jack.

“More or less.”

“And your noticeable technological absence?” said Merritt.

Dylan dropped his hands to his sides. He could feel the nervous tension in his face, the guilty smile he couldn’t do much about. Sometimes, and usually those times were these times, when he had little to no control over what his face did, and when Merritt’s eyes were fixed on him like a pair of particularly sensitive magnets, it was better to just say what was on his mind. He shrugged helplessly. “It’s been a hard couple days.”

Thankfully, they seemed to accept this easily, too, and didn’t push or pry. The pity bleeding out of the corners of their faces, however, was a little more than he could bear.

“Anyway. You were giving Jack something to keep him busy?” Danny prompted, shattering the tension.

“Yes,” said Dylan, latching on to the out appreciatively. “Jack —”

He strode forward, and at this distance Dylan could see the golden blond curls starting to peek out from under his beanie, and he wondered how long it had actually been since he’d seen the kid, for his hair to have grown that much.

“What’s the plan?” said Jack, stretching his arms and fingers and rubbing his hands together to get them a bit warmed up.

“You been working on your vocalics?”

“Every night before bedtime,” he said, cracking his knuckles.

“I can vouch for that,” said Lula, sounding only slightly put-out. “Every night.”

“How good is your elderly woman?”

“And when he gets up in the morning —”

“I might need to listen to a clip real quick, but —”

“— and in the shower —”

“— it’s pretty damn good, if I say so myself.”

“— _refuses_ to eat dairy….” She paused, noticing them all looking at her. “What? I’m just saying, will a glass of chocolate milk kill you?”

“It makes the mucus in your throat thicken,” Jack said, and from the impatient drag in his voice, it wasn’t the first time.

“He’s right. That’s what did Julie Andrews in,” supplied Merritt.

“What? No, it isn’t,” said Danny, “she had nodules.”

“And how do you think she got those nodules, Daniel?”

“I highly doubt one of the world’s most renowned sopranos developed nodules from textbook improper vocal care, but sure, why not. Jack, don’t drink chocolate milk.”

“I’m just saying, a Dame like Julie probably takes a lot of milk in her tea…” Merritt shrugged, trailing off precariously.

“Fine. Cross tea off your list, too.”

“Just tea with milk.”

“Oh. Right. Of course.”

“Anyway, if Abbott and Costello are finished….”

“Sorry, Dylan.”

“…Sorry.”

He let Jack pull up a YouTube clip of two white-haired women — ‘100 Year Old BFFs’ — and listen to them chat about selfies, dancing, and their disappointment with Apple products, shaping his mouth around the words as they spoke them, jumping in pitch and making his voice rattle just a bit, until he sounded like a third friend hidden off-camera.

Dylan slipped a piece of paper from his wallet onto the table so Jack could see it, pulled a pen and the Nokia from his jeans pocket, and then said, “Ready?”

“Sure am, sonny,” said Jack, in his tiny, trembling voice.

Merritt and Lula burst out laughing and Dylan chuckled — even Danny’s mouth quirked up.

“Okay,” said Dylan, dialing and pressing speaker. “I need to you be a little frantic, okay? Just read off this paper.”

Jack nodded as the phone rang, the bright sound reverberating around the dank warehouse. After two rings, a woman picked up.

“Federal Bureau of Investigations, Washington D.C., how may I direct your call?”

“My name is Beatrice Fuller,” Jack set in, fumbling a bit around the words like he couldn’t quite think straight enough to pick the right ones, or put them in the right order. “My — my grandson —”

“Is this an emergency, ma’am?”

Dylan nodded.

“Yes,” said Jack.

“Ma’am, I recommend you hang up immediately and dial 9-1-1 —” Dylan started scribbling rapidly on the corner of the paper “— they will be able to assist you more efficiently with your emergency.”

“No — please —” Jack read off, “— my grandson is an employee with you — I-I-I can’t g-get ahold of him — it’s — it’s m-my husband, he’s had a heart at-t-tack and I c-can’t reach m-my g-g-grandson —”

“Is your grandson the only emergency contact you have available to you?”

Jack threw in a sob for good measure, stalling for time as Dylan scribbled faster. “Y-Yes, m-m-m-my son p-p-passed away — p-please, my grandson —”

There was a pause. “What is your grandson’s name, Mrs. Fuller?”

“Sh-Shawn F-F-Fuller.”

“And which hospital is your husband being transported to?”

“George W-W-W-W-W —”

“…George Washington University Hospital?”

Jack let out a piteous wail. “Y-Y-Yes!”

“All right. We will pass the message on. Take care.”

“Thank you,” Jack gasped, and the line went dead.

Dylan squeezed him on the shoulder.

“Wow,” said Merritt, “That was good, Jackie.”

“Thanks, man… but listen, don’t — don’t call me Jackie, all right? It makes me feel like a Kennedy.”

Merritt ignored this last part. “Seriously, you should take up voice-acting or something… do some of those cartoons, Family Guy and all that, maybe make a little scratch on the side….”

“You watch Family Guy?” said Lula interestedly.

“It’s both educational and entertaining.”

“Of course it is,” said Danny, and then to Dylan, “Was that it? Are we finished here? Because I’m hungry, and burners are still traceable.”

“Yeah, you’re all free to go,” said Dylan, picking his coat up off the floor and shaking off the dust. When he stood back up, however, he found them all staring at him as they buttoned up their coats and readjusted their scarves and hats. “I’ll text you all when I’m — what?”

“You don’t think you’re getting off that easy, do you?” said Lula.

“Yeah, man, we haven’t seen you in, what —” Jack looked at Lula and Merritt, who both shrugged “— a month? You just left us hanging.”

Dylan glanced between all of them. “I thought we were okay…” he said, uncertainly.

“We are,” said Merritt. “We’re thick as thieves. Cool as the proverbial cucumber.”

“Okay,” said Dylan, not comprehending.

“For a really smart guy, you’re really kind of stupid sometimes,” said Lula.

“What do you think,” Merritt asked the others, “Little Italy? Or Chinatown?”

“Italian. Always Italian,” said Lula. “Macao ruined Chinese for me.”

“The cheese, babe —” Jack said under his breath.

“Aw, we’ll get you something with no dairy,” she murmured sweetly, patting his cheek.

“Wait — no —” Dylan looked at Danny, who was looking back at him blankly as he tugged on a pair of grey gloves. “Come on. Really?”

Danny’s eyes widened slightly and he gave his head a small, bemused shake, as if to say, ‘Really what?’.

“I mean — you, of all people, can’t be in on this.”

“In on what?” said Danny, tightening his scarf. “Listen, I’m not going to fight Lula, she’s a biter. You’re in that corner on your own.” And he headed for the stairs.

“I am a biter,” said Lula. “I have a really strong jaw, you know, it helps to kind of — latch on….”

Merritt clapped Jack on the back, said, “Congratulations, buddy,” and followed Danny up.

“That’s in _cred_ ibly inappropriate,” said Lula, trailing after him. “I wasn’t even talking about that. And even if I was, it’s still inappropriate. What I do with Jack’s dick is my business, and Jack’s business, and not your business, okay? Mine and Jack’s. Not Merritt’s.” They could hear her lecturing him all the way up the stairs, down the entry hall, and over the clang of the heavy steel door being pushed out of its frame. “Lula — that’s me — and Jack — that’s Jack — and not Merritt — that’s you. In case you weren’t clear.”

Merritt let out a pitchy, wordless yell. Dylan looked around at Jack with a meek smile. He jerked his head back at the door. “So that’s going well?”

Jack shrugged and laughed. “She just does something for me, man.”

“I suppose that’s all that matters,” said Dylan.

“She’s just… there’s no choice, you know?” he said. “I just wanna be with her all the time. Plus, she’s always taking my things, so I kind of have to be with her all the time. Which means….” He leaned toward the exit and his feet soon followed. “Come on, Dylan. It’s just dinner.”

Dylan shook his head, but swung on his coat. “Fine, but you’re all paying. And I’m getting a drink.”

They rode the subway separately, just in case, Merritt leaning against the middle doors, Jack and Lula pressed together in the two-person seat on one end, Dylan and Danny squeezed into the one on the other end. Danny fiddled with a card deck as they rode, and Dylan checked his phone almost compulsively, waiting for the confirmation texts he was expecting at any moment.

After ten minutes, Danny held up a fan of cards. “Pick a card.”

Dylan obliged, briefly staring at a familiar, overworked, exhausted blonde woman, and then Danny’s deft shuffling brought him back. He looked up into Danny’s face, taking in the crease of concentration between his brows, the downturn of his mouth, and once again was staring into a different time, at a different person, and it was this, mostly, that made him jump up out of the seat.

The sudden motion startled Danny and his eyes darted rapidly up and down the train, searching for whatever it was that made Dylan leap to his feet as if burned. Merritt, halfway down, was giving them a similar look of concern. At the opposite end, Jack and Lula had just noticed something going on, and Dylan flicked his hand through the air on the way to rubbing the back of his neck: ‘Fine, I’m fine’.

But though they all sank back into their spots, there was a tension in each of their bodies that told Dylan they would be checking back throughout the remainder of the ride. He swore at himself, and then, facing Danny once more, forced a smile onto his face and said,

“Finish your trick.”

It was Danny’s turn to oblige, and he lifted the deck to his lips and blew, a short and sharp blast of air, right into the edge of the deck. Then he fanned them out once more, face-up this time.

“Do you see your card here?”

Dylan shook his head, stroking his stubble with one hand, and said, “No.”

“What about there?”

Craning around to see, Dylan let out a single breathless laugh, impressed. There it sat, shoved in the seam of the opposite window. “That’s good. You’re getting really good.”

“I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands,” said Danny, half-rising from his seat and reaching out for the card, which he unstuck and slipped smoothly back into the deck.

“Must be nice,” Dylan said lightly.

“In theory.” He looked up as the train slowed and Dylan followed his gaze.

Merritt kicked easily off his door, nodding seemingly to himself, and Jack and Lula stood at their end, talking quietly with their heads bent close together.

“This is us,” said Danny, also standing.

“You know, I’ve lived here most of my life,” said Dylan, “I grew up here. I know my way around.”

Danny shrugged and smirked. “Just making sure. You never know when age could decide to catch up with you.”

“You have no idea,” Dylan laughed.

The doors slid open and they all got off.

It was a bit of a walk, but it was much more bearable wrapped up in his coat. He transferred all of his things into the woolen pockets and burrowed deeper into the collar, letting his own breath and the smell of Danny’s shampoo warm his face.

Eventually they caught up with Jack and Lula, who had led the way and stopped in the door of a tiny, convoluted box of a place, with checkered tablecloths spread over all the tables and flickering candles in clear jars in the center of each.

“Five, please,” Lula said to the host, a smiling bald man in a button-down and bowtie.

“Five, yes, come with me!” and he led them through the little room, around a wall, and to a cramped table in the corner. Garlands of holly were strung up in the corner and Frank was crooning somewhere in the back. There was a soft, chilly breeze that would occasionally waft through the restaurant and beat back the encroaching heat, and the smells coming from the kitchen were heavenly. It was all very comfortable, and Dylan situated himself in the corner seat with good grace.

“A little romantic, maybe, for our present purposes,” said Merritt, taking off his fedora for the first time that day and hanging it on the back of his chair, “but not a bad little spot.” He squinted over Dylan’s shoulder. “And I think I see a Bertani Amarone, I’ll be right back —”

While Merritt entangled the host in a discussion about the wine rack, Jack, Lula, Danny, and Dylan helped themselves to the giant bread basket their waiter set on their table, along with a dish of oil and spices.

They’d ordered drinks and appetizers by the time Merritt returned, a bottle and corkscrew in one hand, five clean glasses in the other.

“How did you get them to give up bottle service?” Dylan laughed over his own glass of Ardbeg, the other hand busy sopping up a healthy amount of green, herby oil with a half-eaten slice of bread.

“A small amount of smooth-talking, a bit of coercion, and what could possibly be considered an inappropriately sexual suggestion,” said Merritt casually, popping the cork. “I think it was the last one that did it.”

“Scared him off?” said Danny, a bit muddled by his mouthful.

“There’s a good chance you’re closer to right than wrong, but you never know. My particular charms appeal to many types of people. Here,” he said, and set about pouring everyone a small amount. “Try that and tell me it doesn’t knock the fuzzy socks right off your tiny, feminine feet.”

“My feet are not feminine,” said Dylan, to more laughter.

“Doesn’t it have to breathe or something?” asked Lula, swirling her glass and peering interestedly over the rim. She must have caught a whiff of something she didn’t like, because her nose wrinkled.

“No, it’s vintage,” said Merritt, and reached across Jack to place his hand firmly over the top of her glass. “Stop that.”

“Sorry,” said Lula, freezing.

Dylan, Danny, and Jack all chuckled.

“What are you waiting for?” Merritt said, “Drink up.”

They all sipped from their glasses, Lula with her eyes locked warily on Merritt.

Then every single one of them winced and immediately talked over each other to explain.

“I’m really more of a scotch guy,” said Dylan, lifting his tumbler as evidence and quickly washing down the dry taste of extremely old grape skin.

“Yeah… I don’t really like wine,” said Jack.

“That’s — interesting,” said Danny. “— you know what, no, it’s not. I don’t want to be nice to you when you made me put that in my mouth. That’s terrible.”

“Wow, that’s bad,” said Lula. “That is really bad. What’s wrong with your taste buds? Did you gargle with bleach as a child?”

“That would explain a lot,” said Danny.

Merritt rolled his eyes. “I don’t know how I ended up friends with you plebeians.”

Dinner was light and relaxed, full of laughter and the occasional brass arrangement of ‘Deck the Halls’ as a marching quartet wandered in and out of restaurants along the street, all four members dressed in heavy coats and hats, and wearing thick, shining streamers and twinkling Christmas lights. And, three scotches deep, Dylan didn’t seem to mind the sight as much as he had before. The food was warm and heavy in his belly — pasta with artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, and mushrooms — and when Danny flat-out refused to leave without coffee, and Lula without dessert, they agreed to order coffee for the whole table, and the entire dessert menu, and spent another hour or two picking off each other’s plates, giggling a bit drunkenly and teasing Lula about her doves, Danny’s old Magicolio moniker and his newer Buffy alias, Merritt’s hat and pitiful taste in wine, Jack’s little old lady voice, and Dylan’s curly hair.

He slumped back in his seat, letting the warmth of drink and candles, and the fullness-to-bursting, simmer over him pleasurably, like he’d sunk into a hot bath. Look at what he’d done, he thought to himself. Look at what he’d made. Out of a bunch of broken pieces, tossed out into the gutter. Out of his own charred existence. Out of ashes.

“This is nice,” he mumbled, so soft and indistinct that only Danny, seated so close next to him, could hear.

“This is what we’re supposed to do, right?” Danny murmured back.

“Hm?”

Lazy eyes drifted down to see Danny giving him a strange look, the kind only Danny could manage: closed and blazing, all at once.

“Take care of each other. Like one single organism."

A golf ball dropped into Dylan’s throat. He stilled his face, careful, so careful, no incidents like the subway again tonight, and then allowed a cool smile once he’d gathered his wits, eyelids heavy, tipped his glass in silent deference, and sipped from his scotch.

They only paid when the waiter came by to announce the restaurant was closing, and after making sure to leave a large tip for the trouble, they wandered out into the empty streets.

Little flakes like fairy dust were falling from the sky, and Merritt’s passable baritone rendition of ‘O Holy Night’ floated through the quiet night air, punctured only by Lula slipping ahead and laughing, pulling Jack along with her and calling back to the others to hurry up. Danny looked back over his shoulder from the middle of the snow-dusted cobblestone road, his eyes bright and his face rosy under the influence of his own carefully-selected wine, shoulders hunched slightly to warm his bare ears, one corner of his lip turned up. His eyebrow twitched up, too, and then fell back into place.

Dylan grinned and accepted the wordless challenge, easily catching up and falling into stride.

“Ready?” said Danny, his breath coming in swirling white puffs.

Dylan’s grin widened, everything fuzzy at the edges, like a soft blanket had been thrown over the city and the five of them, the only people awake in the whole world. “Only if you are.”

And they took off, running full-speed, fit to burst, lungs straining in the cold, legs numb, and as he passed Lula and Jack, and a very late-to-the-game Merritt, holding neck-and-neck with Danny, feeling his heart drumming against his chest, he found that nothing else much mattered. Nothing could touch him here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact:
> 
> I spent a good twelve minutes staring at "If Abbott and Costello have finished..." blah blah, wondering why it looked so wrong, why it made absolutely no sense, why was I such a fool, muttering it over and over to myself and agreeing with myself that it sounded strange, but telling myself it couldn't be, before realizing
> 
> I wrote "Elvis and Costello".
> 
> Let me tell you about her, amirite? I sAiD, AM I RIGHT?


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) The semester has started up again, that's why it's taken so damn long. Apologies on behalf of my shitty education.
> 
> 2) Happy post-Inauguration. I've been on cloud nine.

When Dylan woke up, it was to a strange feeling, like he’d spent the last twenty-four hours in another life, one where he could eat pasta without his stomach curdling, could wander the streets in the snow without his chest wrung tight like an old, ratted towel. Like a fairytale. The strangeness was helped along by the loose sort of weight in his body — his joints felt like jelly, his legs and feet thick like they’d been over-pumped with blood, his head heavy, but not unpleasantly so, and a cup of coffee and a tall glass of water sorted that out quickly. He even gave in and threw a couple sausages and some eggs into a pan and had his second real breakfast in a week, which was more than he’d had in the past two months. It was like his entire body was buzzing.

After breakfast and a lazy shower, Dylan pulled an old leather duffel from beneath his bed. He shoved a few books, his phone charger, a couple decks of playing cards, the cellophane-wrapped plate of cookies, and a pair of snow boots inside, just in case, buttoned his coat around him, checked his pockets for his keys, fought against his every fiber and turned the thermostat all the way down, and headed out into the hall, securing every lock and bolt behind him.

He had three apartments in the city — this one, on the UWS; one in deep Brooklyn, even more sparse than this, in case he really needed to go off the grid; and one financed purely by the Eye, both his favorite and least favorite, due to its extravagance. It was this last apartment that he headed to now, wearing fitted pants and shined shoes, his coat collar flipped chicly, and he switched from the subway at Penn to a gleaming Lincoln, waiting patiently at the curb to shepherd him into Greenwich.

“Thank you,” said Dylan dismissively, flipping the driver a fifty (one of the ones from the Man in the Overcoat) as he stepped smoothly out of the leather cabin and onto the neat, swept sidewalk outside his building.

“My pleasure, sir,” said the driver, before pulling silently away from the curb.

Dylan nodded to the uniformed doorman as he passed through a double set of sleek, gold doors and into the warmth and silence of the lobby. It was decorated for the season, a menorah on the security desk and a towering tree dressed in giant gold baubles presiding over the white marble. He bypassed all of this without a second look and stepped into the waiting elevator. It dinged obediently upon insertion of his key, the doors hissed shut, and he shot up toward the very top floor.

The ride was quick and painless, and the doors reopened seconds later into a sprawling penthouse, polished wooden floors stretching to every corner, made comfortable by large, fluffy white carpets; thick grey sofas and armchairs accented with colorful, rustic woolen blankets; tall, mahogany bookshelves packed to the limit; a shining kitchen prepared with multiple stainless steel appliances; and a pair of large, frosted French doors leading off into a magnificent bedroom. Daylight flooded through the endless expanse of windows taking over almost every inch of available wall space, and the temperature was just on the right side of too warm.

Dylan dropped his duffel in the bottom of the closet, plugged in his phone, and began to sift through the suits hung neatly within. There were jackets of every color and corresponding shade — black, grey, navy, tan… even burgundy. He plucked the burgundy out of line and hung it on the back of the closet door.

Then he snatched up his phone and fired off a text:

‘Dear Lucy,

If amenable, and weather permitting, I’ll meet you tonight at eight o’clock, at the following address.

-Dylan’

And the accompanying Lafayette address.

It took less than a minute for the response to come in:

‘I’d love to. Any particular dress code?’

Dylan glanced at his choice of suit. ‘Stunning, but practical.’

A bit longer of a wait, and then: ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘I’m not worried. See you tonight.’

The suit was in impeccable shape, it needed no ironing or lint-rolling, and Dylan had already trimmed the shadow across his face, so he settled for turning on the giant flat-screen in the living room and scanning the news.

He didn’t hate waiting like Danny and the others — he spent much of his life preparing for a future moment in time and knew the value of a still minute. It meant recovery and recollection, temporary safety, and more often than not, sleep. And Dylan, more often than not, loved to sleep, owing to generally getting so little of it that he spent most of his free time chasing it down, and when he caught up with it, fighting muddy dreams for proper focus.

But he had gotten plenty of undisturbed sleep the night before. Whatever burning flame that had been stricken to life in him over the past night — laughter and scarves and breathlessness spun a brief web around him like an electric hug — hummed over his skin. He couldn’t sit still, and it had been a long, long time since he couldn’t sit still.

He picked up _Great Expectations_. He glazed over five pages, reading and rereading paragraphs he couldn’t remember taking in, then threw it down to the table.

He fished out an extremely old deck of cards from his duffel, feeling the way the gloss finish had turned to sticky, creased cardstock beneath his callused fingertips, rotating the cards one after the other between his fingers with ease, and sighed.

For one wild moment, he considered slipping away to the public library and tucking himself into a corner like he used to on hot summer days, when his dad was away and his mother would chase him out of the apartment so she could clean with the harsh chemicals. But the apartment was stocked with books, and it was not a sweltering summer day, and the apartment smelled vaguely like wood, not ammonia.

He thought about the bottles stashed in the upper cabinets in the kitchen, courtesy of the Eye, and immediately rejected the idea — he doubted the smell of liquor would do much in the way of cologne.

He flicked his wrist and a card zipped directly from his fingers to the window seam, where it lodged itself snugly between the pane and the frame. Yes, Danny was getting good. Jack had long been better than Dylan — he just had that natural aptitude that couldn’t be contested — but Danny was improving with an almost unsettling speed. Dylan wondered if this was how he felt all the time — insufferably alive — and was overwhelmed with a wash of sympathy, and — he snorted at the realization — a squirming nugget of envy.

He thought of the others, if this was how _they_ felt — thought of Lula’s insistence in following him home the previous night, everyone pleasantly buzzed and warm, if it was a need to alleviate the boredom or if she really was “worried about your sanity, Dylan, that place is so depressing —”

Of Merritt’s semi-helpful, “You don’t mess with a grown man’s apartment. If he likes it bleak and soul-crushing, you let it be bleak and soul-crushing.”

Of Jack’s subtle, “Drop it.”

Of Danny’s nod and quick “’night,” and his eyes dancing in the reflected blue glow from the screen of his phone.

He was sure — he sighed and ran his fingers habitually through his hair — Danny was suffering the same restlessness in his loft.

He looked at his watch. Only seven hours to go.

He buried his head in the couch and turned the TV up, wondering if his body would ever remember the proper response to feeling young and vibrating with energy.

To be fair, the most vivid of those feelings were usually accompanied by the memory of a bloodied nose or a bruised fist, and occasionally a nasty hangover, so he couldn’t blame it much for the panicked rejection.

Program after program passed, all complaining about stock and bureaucratic fiasco, blurring together while Dylan fidgeted and paced the apartment, shuffling one-handed the deck from before, over and over and over and over and over and over and over. He checked his watch compulsively, just like he’d checked his phone the previous night, as the sun slowly fell beneath the skyline, turning the white walls of the apartment from grey to gold to pinkish orange, slowly growing dark enough to eventually warrant turning on the lights.

Finally, with an hour to go, Dylan slipped out of his old work button-up and into the suit, sliding it over his shoulders like butter. He did all the date-night things: flossed and carded his fingers through his hair so it curled with lazy effort, tied his necktie in a simple, elegant knot that sat in the V of his collarbones, fastened in place a set of silver cufflinks and tie pin, buffed out any scuffs on his shoes, and pocketed his keys and wallet before swinging on his coat and heading out.

The restaurant wasn’t far from his place so he walked, shivering only slightly and immensely grateful to have his coat back. All the snow had been efficiently removed from the sidewalks here, and he didn’t have to pay much attention to where specifically he stepped — just watched the people wandering about, heading to dinner or back home. They were mostly young here, financial prodigies and wealthy dependents exploring the romantic neighborhood at Christmastime, the live music — more often cool jazz than not, on a wintry Sunday evening — issuing from tiny bars and restaurants, their windows glowing like campfires in the dark.

He came upon the restaurant five minutes before eight, exactly on time, and positioned himself to the left of the door, leaning up casually against the wall between two windows to wait.

A minute later, a cab pulled up and Dylan could just make out the familiar brown hair and heart-shaped face beyond the back window. He darted forward and opened the door.

“Thank you,” said Lucy, blinking up at him in surprise. “Hello.”

“Hello,” Dylan purred, offering her his hand. His cufflink gleamed neatly in the light and Lucy beamed, obviously pleased with this new appearance.

She took his hand and stepped out of the cab. Dylan motioned for the cabbie to lower the passenger window, slipped him some cash, and assisted Lucy onto the sidewalk without having to step in the snow piled in the gutter.

“Let’s get inside, out of the snow,” said Dylan, slipping his hand down to the small of her back, “shall we?”

It was quiet and dark in the restaurant, and they were greeted immediately by a young host in shirtsleeves and a pristine black vest. “Welcome. Do you have a reservation?”

Dylan froze, heart thundering in his ears. The host eyed him expectantly.

After a half-second’s worth quick thinking, Dylan settled himself and said, “For two, under Stewart.”

“Yes, I have it right here,” said the host, quickly scanning the reservation list before him, and he withdrew two menus from thin air. “Please follow me.”

The host led them through the restaurant, weaving between full tables and tables half-turned, walking all the way to the back, where the low hum of chatter from the front was slightly muted, and only a few tables were occupied. He set the menus carefully on a table for two tucked into a corner, laid with a thick white tablecloth and gleaming dishes, situated beneath one of a collection of large, intricate chandeliers that had been dimmed to enhance the intimate atmosphere.

Dylan pulled out the chair facing the rest of the long hall and gestured for Lucy to sit. She did, and slid her coat from her shoulders and set her clutch on the table while Dylan took the adjacent seat.

“Your waiter will be with you shortly,” said the host. “Would you like some water while you wait?”

“That would be great, thanks,” said Dylan, not moving his eyes from Lucy. “No tap — bottled, if you have it.”

“Of course, sir.”

The host zipped away for the briefest of moments, returned holding an icy cold bottle labeled with a white-capped mountain, filled their glasses, and then disappeared.

“It’s no contest,” said Dylan, smiling.

“What isn’t?” said Lucy as she sipped from her water.

“I mean for anyone else — no one even compares to you here.” He waved vaguely about the long hall they’d been sat in without looking from her face. And she did look quite lovely in a sleek black dress that hugged her frame; long, slim sleeves that bared her shoulders and neck; soft, blood red lips.

“Thank you. You clean up well, yourself.”

“Well, I had to prove that all of my bulk before was a direct result of the snow and sweaters, not my actual state of being.”

“I see that.” She laughed as he smoothed his suit with a subtle flourish, and he watched her eyes trace the path of his hand over his chest.

“What do you think? Drinks?” he said, picking up the drink menu with one hand, the other still pressing lightly into his sternum, one fingertip slipped slightly beneath the burgundy tie and silver pin. “I don’t know about you, but I could use something to stimulate blood flow. Something to chase away the chill from the snow.”

“I wouldn’t mind a glass of wine,” said Lucy, turning to her own menu.

“I’m going to say you’re thinking… one of the chardonnays. No?” He grinned sheepishly in his wrongness.

But it just seemed to endear her to him more. She smiled again. “Red, in fact. The dryer, the better.”

“Of course. No, you’re unpredictable, I like that. Like the weather. A force of nature.”

“Maybe you’re just a bad guesser,” she teased.

“Maybe.” Dylan nodded in playful agreement. “There’s no story behind that, is there?”

“A story about my drinking preferences?”

“Everyone’s got a story about their drinking preferences. No time better for sharing overly-personal stories than on the first date.”

“Okay.” She leaned in, pulled by the shadow in his eyes and the secret on his lips. “What’s yours?”

He gave a small, reluctant laugh that punched from one side of his mouth. “It’s… no more interesting than yours, I promise.”

“Aw, but I want to hear.”

He smoothed his tie again, briefly met her eyes, and drew a slow breath. “Uh… My dad. He was no slouch in the whiskey department.”

“Oh. I see.” She’d picked up on the minor note in his voice, the taut cheeks, more of a grimace than anything else. “I’m s —”

“No, don’t be,” he said, cutting her off. He drew another breath, letting his face relax this time and feeling his shoulders go with it. “He wasn’t an alcoholic, he didn’t mistreat us. No, he just — you know how some people’s noses are a direct line to their memory? It’s a pretty strong connection between my old man and the smell of whiskey.”

“How come?”

“He used to have a glass before going to sleep. Said it settled his nerves. No one’s nerves needed settling more than his.” Another breath, and suddenly his fingers were itching for the cold, smooth curve of a tumbler. He scrambled to keep talking, to keep his rhythm. “No matter what day it was, he tucked me into bed. And I smelled whiskey.”

“So you’re a whiskey-drinker, like your dad.”

“Scotch,” said Dylan, a startled laugh bubbling out of him before he could stop it. Rhythm gone.

But that seemed to settle Lucy’s curiosity, and she switched gears. “My boss.”

Dylan bit the corner of his lip and tapped his chest lightly, recovering. Her eyes flicked down at the movement, then back to his face. “Really?” His own smile became teasing. “Your boss knows a bit about tannins, does he?”

“He’s no connoisseur —” Ah. Dylan settled back slightly, satisfied. “— but he tries to be.”

“And what actually is he?”

Her laugh tinkled in the thick air.

Just then the waiter appeared at their table, dressed in the same spotless uniform as the host.

“Bonsoir, Monsieur Stewart, Mademoiselle,” he said, giving a little bow to each of them in turn. His French accent was very good, and rolled easily into and out of existence. Almost, Dylan thought dryly, like magic. “My name is Jonathan, and I will be taking care of you this evening. Before we begin, may I interest you in a sample of our featured wine, chosen by the sommelier specifically to complement the snow we’ve been having?” A bottle appeared as if from nowhere. “A 2014 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Réserve Spéciale Médoc Cabernet Sauvignon, full and aromatic with conspicuous notes of leather and woody spices.”

Lucy gave Dylan a surprised look, and he tapped his chest once more in approval, finger brushing the edge of his tie pin. “Yes, no, that would be lovely, thank you.”

The waiter swiftly uncorked the bottle and poured a small measure of deep, ruby liquid into her glass. “And you, Monsieur?”

“Why not?” said Dylan, his gaze never leaving Lucy’s face. “For the snow.”

After they both sipped the wine — Dylan struggling to maintain his composure over intense recoil — and Lucy gave her hearty approval, the waiter poured them each a full glass and positioned the bottle at Lucy’s left.

“Do you require a few more moments to consider the menu?” he said politely, folding his hands behind his back.

“Yes, please,” said Dylan, as Lucy said the same. “Thank you.”

“I will return shortly.”

As the waiter strode away, a different host arrived, leading another couple — young, whispering close together, hands entwined — to the table opposite theirs. They sat and bowed their heads closer, giggling softly, each enraptured by the other.

“Isn’t that adorable?” Lucy said, watching them with a dreamy look on her face as the same waiter zipped over to their table.

“It’s not horrible,” said Dylan. “Young and in love. A bit of a dreamer’s notion.”

“And a romantic one.”

He looked around at her, and lifted his glass. “To romantics — no matter how old — and to you.”

She lifted her glass as well. “And to you.”

Dylan smoothed his tie and smiled.

Just before their lips touched the rims of their glasses, she paused, her eyes alight. “Ah! And to the snow, for an excellent wine.”

Dylan inclined his head. “To snow.”

They sipped.

Then they picked up the menus, dotted with tastefully glittering snowflakes, and began to peruse. The waiter returned not long after to take their orders, and then they were once again left to their own devices.

They spent their time chatting lightly and flirting. Dylan asked about her childhood, her schooling, her job, sipping consistently at their wine, until there was a sort of gloss in her eyes and a pink hue that had nothing to do with the powdered blush on her cheeks.

Soon enough, their food arrived, along with the waiter, who made a show of rapidly clearing the table and ascertained their satisfaction with his hands behind his back before departing to attend to the couple huddled at the other table.

The food was delicious, light and creamy and unbelievably expensive, and Dylan and Lucy traded bites on the ends of their forks, joking and making pleased sounds, interrupted with the occasional sip of wine. They finished the bottle, Dylan’s two glasses to Lucy’s three, and Dylan took it upon himself to order another as the waiter cleared it away.

“Are you sure?” asked Lucy. “There’s no way it’s not an expensive bottle.”

Dylan grinned down at his plate, and managed to turn it into a smoldering look up through his eyelashes. “Let’s just say… it’s worth it.”

The blush on her face deepened. “In that case,” she said, carefully pushing her chair back from the table and reaching instinctively for her clutch. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to make a trip to the ladies’ room.”

He ‘hmm’ed, intercepting her hand and brushing his lips to the soft skin behind her knuckles.

“What’s that for?” she said — from the sound of it — breathlessly.

“Just a bit of incentive to come back,” he murmured into her hand, holding her gaze.

She turned positively red, smiled at him, a brilliant, shy thing, and slipped away down the hall.

Dylan watched her go, and when he was sure she’d fallen out of sight, opened the clutch she’d forgotten and slid the smartphone in its foldable leather case from the main pocket. From his own wallet, he pulled a thin, smooth white sticker in the shape of a small rectangle, a faint, raised, squiggly grey pattern folded like a little worm curled up and pressed to the back.

He moved quickly, opening the case and running through each slotted card until he found the one he was looking for: plain white, with a black strip running the length. He smoothed the sticker to the bottom of the card, wiped it thoroughly with the cloth napkin on his lap, slipped it back into place and wiped down the case, too, before replacing the phone, snapping the clutch shut, running it over once with the napkin, and setting it back down exactly as she’d left it.

When Lucy returned they ordered dessert, which they shared. The wine sloshed about unpleasantly in his stomach, and it was everything he could do to not pull the waiter aside and ask for the liquor menu. Instead, he smiled genuinely at Lucy and laughed at her insistence that she was full, despite continuing to pick at their crêpe suzette, dusted with powdered sugar like snow.

Finally, Dylan called for the check and peeled the appropriate amount of bills from his wallet. He dropped them in the book and stood, taking Lucy’s hand to help her out of her chair and holding her coat up so she could slip her arms in without fuss.

“Merci beaucoup,” said the waiter, bowing them out of the restaurant. “Bonne soirée.”

Dylan and Lucy nodded in thanks and walked out into the wintery night.

“Well,” he said, looking up into the thick black sky, where little white flakes had started to spiral down, just barely enough to be anything at all, but exactly what he’d been hoping for. “Would you look at that.”

“It’s snowing,” she said in subdued delight, blinking up with a smile.

“It’s snowing,” he repeated softly. He looked down at her. “I had a great time.”

“Me too,” said Lucy, smiling up at him, her lashes long and dark. “Oh — sorry —”

The lovesick couple that had taken the table across from theirs had just exited the front doors, the girl accidentally bumping into Lucy so that she fell off her heels and into Dylan’s chest, her nose pressed close to his tie pin.

“Oops,” the girl flung carelessly over her shoulder, slightly muffled by the grey scarf pooled around her neck. “Sorry.” And she buried her head into her date’s shoulder, giggling, walking together hand-in-hand.

But Lucy didn’t seem to mind. “Sorry,” she said again.

Dylan could smell the wine on her breath.

“It’s no problem,” he muttered, a small half-smile working its way into one cheek.

She cleared her throat and disentangled herself from him, looking slightly dazed as she did. “So. Do you….” She cleared her throat again. “Do you want to come to my place? For coffee or something? I mean, it’s no pressure, obviously.”

His smile widened, a hint of apology. “I’d love to.”

“But….”

“…but I have work in the morning. And to be honest, I’m not the most jolly of early risers.”

“Ah.”

“I’d be late, I’d make it a habit, I’d get disciplinary marks, I’d eventually have to have a talk with my supervisor and that’s no fun, I’d snark, get fired, have to be escorted out, go on the run… it could be very messy,” he finished over her laughter.

“Of course, no one wants that,” she said, composing herself. “I guess, I’ll call you? Maybe the next snow, we can go for a walk or something.”

He nodded. “I’d like that,” he said, injecting as much sincerity into his tone and expression as he could. “Here, we can have a small one now, let me walk you to a cab.”

“Okay.”

They wandered down the length of the block with her arm in his, bumping into each other and giggling, inspecting snowflakes that landed on their lapels, until, after ten minutes or so, they finally came upon a taxi idling on the curb with its light on. Dylan thumped the hood and pointed at Lucy. The man tipped his fedora in the affirmative and Dylan opened the door for her.

“Good night, Lucy.”

“Good night, Dylan,” she said warmly.

She leaned in closer, and suddenly he could see the snowflakes on her eyebrows and lashes. His heart clenched — he turned his head an inch and dropped a gentle, lingering kiss on her cheek, the scent of powder strong and soft in the heat from her skin.

“Get home safe,” he whispered, and then helped her carefully into the back of the cab. He smoothed his hand down his tie and tapped at his chest. The pin flashed in the light from the street lamps. “Enjoy the snow.”

“You too,” said Lucy.

He shut the door and nodded at the driver, who pulled away with a slight crunch of wheels on snow.

He watched the cab until it turned the corner, and then pivoted on his heel and, huddling into his coat, strolled back the way he’d come earlier, feeling satisfied and chuckling to himself as he passed the restaurant.

The small successes of the night, and the pervasive good mood carried him back to his apartment building with a bit of a bounce in his step. He suppressed his smile to nod at the doorman — keeping this character was muscle memory now — and let it bloom fully only once he was back in the elevator.

Up to the penthouse, into the bedroom to drop his coat on his bed, and then to the living room, where he situated himself comfortably on the couch, fresh drink in hand, eye on the steel doors.

He didn’t have to wait long.

In fewer than ten minutes, the elevator dinged open and Jack and Lula stepped into the living room.

“That… was easier than expected,” said Lula, unwinding her scarf from her neck. “Danny might be right — you, sir, are getting lazy in your old age.”

“This place is in _sane_ ,” said Jack, gaping around at the sleek apartment, with its color-coordinated furnishings and spotless windows.

“Thank you,” Dylan said over his glass.

“You didn’t even double back or anything,” Lula went on, sprawling into one of the cushy armchairs situated around the room and ignoring Jack’s disapproving _tut_ as he strode the perimeter, admiring the enormous bay windows. “It was, I mean — it was _boring_ , man.”

“Sorry I didn’t give a better show.”

“Hey, any show is fine with me,” said Lula, “I’m easily pleased — I am an ideal audience member. I’m just worried for _you_. Are you always this —”

“Boring?” said Dylan.

“Yes.”

“Sometimes, when he starts going on about Harry Kellar and Dante and all that…” said Jack. “Dude, is this real?” He was kneeling down in front of the darkened fire grate.

Dylan stretched for a thin remote placed neatly on the mahogany coffee table and tapped one of the little buttons. A fire jumped to life in the grate and Jack careened backward with an “Oh, shit —!”

Then he craned his neck around to fix Dylan with a suitably abashed grin. “Fair enough.”

Dylan tipped his glass at him as Lula swiped up the remote curiously. “If you’ve both finished insulting me…”

“Sorry,” said Jack immediately.

“Your tie knot is lame,” said Lula. And then, with an apologetic flick of her head, “Sorry, last one.”

Jack snorted.

“It’s a Windsor, what’s wrong with —”

“Okay, well, it’s barely a Windsor. It’s a Wind.”

“Leave his tie alone, Lula, he’s already going to catch enough flack for his date.”

“Aw, you’re right. I’m sorry,” she said sweetly, smoothing the tie Dylan was attempting to bat her away from.

“Thank you,” Dylan groused semi-good-naturedly. “Thank you very much for that.” He readjusted his suit so everything was once again laying neatly and in place, not at all concerned about his choice of tie knot, and settled back into the couch. “So, Merritt’s going to be a minute, he’s taking ‘my date’ home —”

Jack’s face split into a somewhat uncertain, but no less wide grin and he palmed his jaw. “He’s gonna be so pissed.”

“That’s what happens when you half-ass your research,” said Dylan, sounding a bit like his elementary school teachers when someone came crying with a bruised knee after horsing around on the jungle gym. “And Atlas?”

“Finishing off his shift — oh, _cool!_ ” said Lula, as she pressed a small blue button on the remote and the tinkling of soft piano began to issue from the hidden speakers about the room. “Yeah, he said he made like three hundred in tips so he was going to finish out the night. He was a really good waiter, actually —”

“He was,” Jack agreed. “Very attentive —”

“And _knowledgeable_ ,” said Lula in genuine surprise. “I asked him what the ‘tout le lapin’ was, and not only did he not even have to look at the menu, he told me unequivocally that I would not like it. _Unequivocally_.”

“He was right,” Jack assured her.

“Well, he never told me what it was, so —”

“All of the rabbit,” Dylan reeled off, smiling again into his glass. He seemed to be having to do that a lot that day. He attributed it to the strange lightness still hovering in his body, and thought nothing more of it.

“Oh. No, I didn’t want that.”

“I thought you could speak like, twelve languages,” said Jack.

“French is not one of them,” said Lula firmly. “My French teacher in high school was a tool, so I found a better use of my time.”

“Tying knots?” said Dylan wryly.

“Why, yes,” said Lula, mirroring his expression perfectly.

The elevator dinged again.

Speak of the devil.

Danny came through, bundled up, and looked around interestedly.

He ‘hmm’ed to himself and began to mutter aloud, tugging his gloves off as he did.

“Dimmed lights, soft music, you’ve got this nice — fire going — hey, Jack —” for he had settled up against the wall by the elevator doors —

“Hey, man.”

“— smells clean —” He took in Lula and Dylan, and pointed at his glass. “— that’s alcohol…” Then he looked at Jack, gesturing between the two. “You okay with this?”

Jack snickered. “Hey, I’m open to whatever.”

“Huh. Interesting,” said Danny.

“Very funny,” said Dylan. “You’re hilarious.”

Danny shrugged and strode through the room to the kitchen with that air of casual ownership, perhaps most pronounced in places he did not own, and slid his coat off onto one of the island barstools, revealing his shirt sleeves and sleek black vest (which Dylan knew would match Jack, if he’d felt the same confidence as Danny and immediately removed his coat). “I’m just saying, you’re on a roll tonight.”

“I want my tip back.”

“Lucy wouldn’t approve of that, would she?”

Dylan shook his head slowly, his expression torn somewhere between amusement and frustration. “How’d you find out?”

Danny shot a politely bemused look at the other two before saying, purposefully obtuse, “Her I.D..”

Dylan’s lip curled. “Not her name, smart-ass. Tonight.”

The glassware clinked as Danny fetched a glass from one of the overhead cabinets and poured himself a healthy amount of water. “I don’t know how often I have to tell you, Dylan —” He chugged half the glass in one swallow. “Excuse me — long night —” Then dropped the glass in the sink and turned to Dylan with the shadow of a smirk on his face. “A good magician never reveals his secrets.”

“How do you know it wasn’t one of us?” said Lula, vaguely indignant.

“You’re not that nosy,” said Dylan.

Lula scoffed. “I am _absolutely_ that nosy, ex _cuse_ me —”

But Jack waved her down with a look that plainly said, ‘it’s not worth it’.

“Where’s Merritt?” asked Danny, folding up his coat as he did and placing it neatly on top of the stool.

 _Ding_.

“I’m here, I’m here.” Merritt slid through the doors, panting and pausing briefly inside the threshold as everyone else had to survey the room. “Whoaa. Nice place.”

“Yeah, so we’ve established,” said Dylan dryly.

“Well, I would’ve known that if I hadn’t been shepherding your date home,” he said pointedly, flopping onto the couch on the opposite side of Dylan. “Alone. Fairly inebriated. _Alone,_ ” he said again, dragging the word out long past its limits.

“Did she tip you?” said Danny.

“A tenner.”

“Oh, that’s not bad.”

“Not at all. Especially considering she’d just been rejected by this big hunk of lovin’ —”

“Merritt, I’m begging you,” Dylan sliced in, “don’t finish that sentence.”

“Sure. For another ten.” He grinned, wide and toothy.

“Happily.” Dylan flipped the bill from his wallet over to Merritt, who tipped his hat in thanks and tucked it away inside his coat.

“So.” Merritt clapped his hands together and focused his attention back onto Dylan. “Jack very kindly texted to let me know that this wasn’t simply your first foray into the social sphere. Danny, I think we owe you a five each.”

“Keep it,” said Danny shortly. “I made four fifty tonight, I don’t want your petty change.”

Merritt turned to him momentarily, his sharp gaze darting all over Danny’s drumming fingers, pink cheeks, bright eyes. “You’re giddy.”

Danny snorted. “I’m not giddy —”

“You’re a little giddy,” said Lula.

“I’m not —”

“It’s the eyes,” said Dylan, waving at his own.

“I’m not giddy, okay, I’m just four hundred dollars more affluent than I was six hours ago. Sorry if financial success is off-putting to you —”

“Hey, no one’s judging,” said Merritt lightly. “It’s a good look on you. Maybe waiting is your true calling.”

‘ _I told you!_ ’ Lula mouthed at Jack and Dylan.

“Right, and maybe your true calling is chauffeuring drunk women around the city,” Danny retorted.

“Hey, you know what,” Merritt drawled, “I don’t mind the company of a few attractive young women every now and then. And they don’t have to be drunk. I prefer it that way, actually. Otherwise it’s like babysitting, you know, and I get enough of that with you three.”

“Really?” intoned Danny.

“Really,” said Merritt. He gave his shoulders a little shake, like he’d had a sudden chill. “You’re feisty tonight.”

Danny simply quirked an eyebrow, and curled his lip and shrugged.

“Weren’t we talking about Dylan’s date, anyway?” said Jack soothingly, readjusting on the wall in case he had to push off and step in.

“That’s right,” said Merritt. “The fruitless date.”

“It wasn’t a date,” said Dylan, and then looked around at Danny, who had said the same thing simultaneously.

“It was pretty date-like for not-a-date,” said Lula. “Didn’t you think she was pretty?”

“She is pretty —” said Dylan.

“ _I_ thought she was gorgeous,” Lula went on.

“I thought she looked a bit like you,” said Jack.

Lula leaned over her chair and batted her eyelashes at him. “You smooth-talker, you.”

He winked, and then returned to Dylan. “Anyway, it was date-like until you went through her purse.”

“My mother always told me to never touch a woman’s purse,” Merritt reprimanded.

“I know — I had to,” said Dylan, a bit shamefacedly.

“Why does that mean it wasn’t a date?” interrupted Lula. “I steal Jack’s things all the time.”

“Lula,” Dylan sighed, “most people don’t make a habit of pick-pocketing the people they’re attracted to.”

“…Fair,” Lula acquiesced.

“Or the people I’m out with,” Dylan said, glaring at Danny, Jack, and Lula in turn.

Danny and Lula stared back unabashedly. Jack squirmed.

“We just wanted to know who she was,” he said. “Just making sure you’re good, man.”

“Then ask, next time,” said Dylan, “instead of sending Atlas over to swipe her bag. You’re welcome, by the way,” he added on, leveling his gaze at Danny. “Your fingerprints were all over it.”

“I knew you’d take care of it.”

“Clever.”

“So the violation of privacy was necessary,” said Merritt, steering them back on track, “why?”

“I needed her building access card,” said Dylan.

“Why?” said Jack.

“RFID tag,” said Danny. In his hand, he held the slick adhesive backing that Dylan had shoved back into his coat pocket. “I can only assume one strong enough to corrupt an entire security system. And —” he strolled casually out of the kitchen, his hands flitting thoughtfully, typing his thoughts out into the air “— that would be why you needed a date, not just her wallet. You needed to get close and personal, maybe you’ve already been close and personal, maybe discreetly, maybe so discreetly even she didn't know, maybe in… hm, Europe?” His eyes flitted briefly into Dylan’s face, a quick check to confirm his direction.

Dylan chewed on the corner of his lip, resisting the urge to shake his head again. Or possibly smile.

“So you’d planted the idea and were reinforcing the message, sooner than you’d planned — huh — a couple weeks sooner, wasn’t it?” Dylan could see yesterday's conversation running through the gears in Danny's brain like oil. “The vague rhythm, the repeated verbal sounds, the eye contact, the nonverbal cues —” Danny’s eyes flicked down to the snowflake tie pin and matching cufflinks, and tapped his own chest absently.

“You were hypnotizing her,” said Jack.

“Just a little bit,” Dylan said.

“Ooh, good,” Lula said, sitting up in her chair. “We _are_ going to rob her.”

“We’re not going to rob her,” said Dylan.

“Then who?” said Merritt.

“No, he’s not going to tell us who,” said Danny. “Let’s go with ‘when’.”

“So…” trailed off Jack, shrugging his shoulders. “…when?”

Dylan gave into the smile, all their attention fixated on him, his body still — miraculously — buzzing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not happy with this because I'm not a hypnotist and that stuff blows my mind, I just tried and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewr


End file.
